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A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid