An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*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 bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
