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A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story 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 riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Alters Little

And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid