A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
