A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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 slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
