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A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame 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 monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Alters Little

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid