A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
