An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
