A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
