An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
