An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
