A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
