A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising 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 the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
