An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting 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, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*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 stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
