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A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Release That Alters Little

Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*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 packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. 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 computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid