A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
