An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated 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 wealth is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson 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 rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, 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 transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
