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A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.

There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.

Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Exceptions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid