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An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Changes Nothing

And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid