A recurring theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people 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 at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
