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An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise 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 wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.

In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Key Exclusions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid