A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth 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 devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
