A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about 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. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
