An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
