A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
