A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful 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 affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
