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An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.

It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.

If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

An Angrier Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Key Outliers

A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid