A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*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 corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
