An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly 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 persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
