An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s 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 packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
