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An age-old motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, 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 particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exclusions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid