A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated 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 riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
