A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
