A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division quite that directly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up 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 redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
