A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
