An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
