An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers 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 dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, 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 blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. 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, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
