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A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, 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 wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.

Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid