A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished 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 redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
