A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
