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A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root 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 respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Outliers

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid