An age-old motif runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. 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 thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
