An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
