An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
