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A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated 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 affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Alters Little

And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.

If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid