An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
