A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
