An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
