A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, 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 antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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
