A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 rich individuals were killed 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 point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
