An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain 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 a follow-up film. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
