An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories 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, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
