An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, 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 — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed 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 national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
