A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
