An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
