A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
