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An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid