An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly 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 would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of 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
