A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money 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 devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid