A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
