An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated 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 assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
