An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting 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 entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured 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 national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
