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A recurring motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.

In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid