A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
