A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really 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 would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits 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
