An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 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, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people 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 distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
