A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, 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 public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
