An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated 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 villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished 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 transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
