A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really 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 idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
