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A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

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

Notable Outliers

Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only 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 possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid