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An age-old theme courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined 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 antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid