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A familiar theme runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.

Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exceptions

There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid