An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
