A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating 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. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
