An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
