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A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.

There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid