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An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid