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A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Film Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.

It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never get around to 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 impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*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 at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid