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A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid