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An age-old idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Film Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.

There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Alters Little

And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.

In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

An Angrier Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid