An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated 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 corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
