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An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Outliers

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid