A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes 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 cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent 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* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
