A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s 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 replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*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, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
