🔗 Share this article

A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Alters Little

However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid