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A recurring theme courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.

It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

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

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid