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A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Release That Changes Nothing

However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.

Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground 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 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid