A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, 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 collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid