A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, 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, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, 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 continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*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 packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
