A familiar idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *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 suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid