A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live 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 top film, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
