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A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Release That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid