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An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.

There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Alters Little

And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.

Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid