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A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality 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 cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Release That Changes Nothing

However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.

In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid