An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
