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A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.

There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, 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 lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid