An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
