An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
