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A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

Actually, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid