An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*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 super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people function with different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
