An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
