A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious 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 the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent 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 reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
