A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range 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 super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
