A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
