🔗 Share this article

A recurring motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Film Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.

There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Alters Little

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and value to society, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Although 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 enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exclusions

Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid