An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
