An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. 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 is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed 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 beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
