A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
However, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
