A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
