An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise 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 neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
