A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
