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An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*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 executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exceptions

There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid