A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
