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A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.

There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.

Actually, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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 affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid