A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge 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 furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
