A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank 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 extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
