An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid