An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge 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 furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
