A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying 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 Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
