A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
