A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
