A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
