An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
