A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*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 killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
