A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting 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 collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, 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
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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
