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An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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 slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid