An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
