A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
