A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From 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 greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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
