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An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

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

Significant Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid