A recurring theme runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting 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 — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
