A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
