A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
