A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
