A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death 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 apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
