A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
