A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful 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, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
