A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
