An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
