A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, 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 revised 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 take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
