A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
