A recurring idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute 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 updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, 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 would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant 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 confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
