An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by blaming graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
