A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
