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A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating 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 monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course.

There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.

Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A Sharper Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid