A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
