A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
