An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting 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 cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
