A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people 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 hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
