A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
