A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*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 gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
