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An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, naturally.

There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid