An age-old idea runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence 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 allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
