A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
