An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered 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 gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
