A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
