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A recurring idea courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid