A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals 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 packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
