A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog 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 a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
