An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
