A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
