A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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 rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
