A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, 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 idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
