A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
