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An age-old idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.

There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

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

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid