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A recurring idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.

Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.

An Angrier Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exceptions

A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid