A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated 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 take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor 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* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
