A familiar idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
