A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
