An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, 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 hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, 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 digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
