A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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 slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
