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A familiar idea courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label 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 clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.

It is not especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.

Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

An Angrier 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 more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid