An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
