A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a 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 legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*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 driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
