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An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid