A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
