A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
