A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly 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 idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
