A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
