An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
