🔗 Share this article

An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.

There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid