A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*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 at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
