🔗 Share this article

A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming 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 cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid