A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, 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 reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
