An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly 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 wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
