A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
