A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
