An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
