A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
