A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
