An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
