A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*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 rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
