A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
