A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
