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A recurring idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.

In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid