An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story 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 riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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 wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
