A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
