A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
