An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money 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 consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*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 hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
