An age-old motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the scrappy residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
