A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure 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 makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge 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 targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
