A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will root out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
