A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
