A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
