A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
