A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
