A familiar motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely 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 a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
A tech journalist with over a decade of experience covering emerging technologies and digital innovation across global markets.
