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A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably 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 be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Exclusions

Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid