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A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence 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 given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly 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 cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid