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An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.

There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. 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 lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Exceptions

Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid