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An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant 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 that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Alters Little

However, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.

If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Outliers

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid