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An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid