A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
