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A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, naturally.

There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Alters Little

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid