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A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.

There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Alters Little

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid