An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
