A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
