A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
