A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
