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A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends 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* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid