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An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Tradition of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated 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 taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.

There is little especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with 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 exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A Sharper Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid