A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
There is little 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 increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, 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 news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
