A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
