A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
