An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
