A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
