A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
