An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
