A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
