A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
