An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind 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* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
