An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the news reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
