An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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 wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
