A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
