An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story 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 riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
