A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
