An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
