A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
