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An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.

It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning 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 tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid