An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "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 contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
