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A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exceptions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid