An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates regularly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money 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 giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
