An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
