A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*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 at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death 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 packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
