A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising 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 appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
