A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
