A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
