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An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion 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 superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility 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 affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid