An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
