An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From 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 rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
