A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed 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 shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
