A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*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 at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends 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* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
