An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
