An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
