A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. 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 complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
