An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
