A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
