A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
