An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
