An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *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 disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
