An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 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 targeted, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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 wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*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 all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
