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A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid