A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*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*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
