An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to 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 allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
