A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range 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 extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
