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An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite 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 perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Outliers

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer 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* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid