A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
