A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums 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 super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, 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 wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge 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 furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
