An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
