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A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating 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 for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.

It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed 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 at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid