A familiar theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*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 corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
