A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
