An age-old theme runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
