A recurring theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
