A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
