A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains 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 Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
