An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
