An age-old idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains 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 Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people 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 distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only 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 a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
