An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
