A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
