An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, 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 cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
