An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
