A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes 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 enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. 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 personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting 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 collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
