🔗 Share this article

A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious 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 rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid