A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
