An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
