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A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.

There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid