A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
