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A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing 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 movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Release That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated 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 at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid