A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough 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 colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*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 beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
