A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*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 killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled 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
