A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
