A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
