A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling 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 monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
