A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
