A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up 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 anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
