A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors 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 do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
