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A recurring motif runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly uplifting tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exceptions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only 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 future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid