A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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
