A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
