A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
