An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — 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 daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
