A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
