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An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Changes Nothing

And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exclusions

A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends 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* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid