A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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
