A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
