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An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

An Angrier Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid