An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving 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 condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
