A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
