An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*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 super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
