A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
