An age-old motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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
