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An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Film Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid