A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
