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A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.

A Tradition of Film Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

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

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid