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A familiar theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid