A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
