A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
