A recurring idea courses through numerous 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 envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up 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 anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
