A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
