An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent 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 theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*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 murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
