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An age-old theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. From 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Alters Little

However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid