A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, 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 societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
