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An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Alters Little

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.

In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, 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 transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid