5 Weird Things All Movies Believe About Rich People
Being poor is boring, so unless they're specifically going for the Oscars, movies tend to stick to the higher tax brackets. You'd figure Hollywood would know a lot about being stupid rich, and yet all they show the audience are a lot of strange, impossible myths. Is it so we'll embarrass ourselves when we sneak into the country club? It's that, isn't it? They don't want us to know what rarebit is, do they? What is it, richies?! We'll find out! Fellow poors, take note: Don't believe any of the following, or you won't even reach the pro shop before they catch you.
Billionaires Can Just Buy Any Company
Money can make a lot of inconveniences magically disappear, but Hollywood seems a little confused about the timeframe. If a rich person needs to buy a building to conduct their superheroing, or a company to oust an enemy, they can simply throw a fistful of money in the air and make their way to the bathroom. Bruce Wayne is by far the biggest offender. In Batman Begins, he brings a pair of women to dinner at a fancy hotel, who proceed to take a swim in the fountain, much to the consternation of the staff. Rather than gently reminding the ladies that there's probably a perfectly good pool in the vicinity, he tucks a check into the manager's pocket and informs him that he's buying the place.
No paperwork, no lawyers, not even an agreement from the hotel's actual owner, who is not in fact the lowly shift manager. Write down an arbitrarily big enough number, and the rules don't apply to you. He did it again in Justice League, buying a bank so that Clark Kent's mom could keep her house (it seems like he could have just bought the house?), and again on the Gotham TV show, buying a nightclub so he and his friends could enter. Again, no deals inked, no contracts signed, no attempt to pay off the bouncer who would almost certainly look the other way for, like, 20 bucks.
In Inception, Saito buys an entire airline solely so the gang can have a bit of privacy in the first-class cabin of a 747. A transcontinental travel service was successfully bought up in the span of what seems to be a week, when merely getting a lawyer to commit to a lunch order takes about six days.
In Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Peter LeFleur defeats Dwight Goodman once and for all by buying majority shares in Global Gym, conducting a complex hostile takeover in the span of a conversation. Dwight accepts the outcome and walks away. He claims he loves the company and his way of life, but due to rich person magic, he has no recourse but to become a complete failure and live the rest of his life as a hobo.
Only Rich People Enjoy Kinky Sex
The "billionaire who likes to spank and/or be spanked" stereotype is way older than the 50 Shades series. The idea is that powerful people enjoy giving up power in their naked time, and while that may be true for some, it's certainly not commonplace enough to warrant at least one appearance in every police procedural. For example, Nip/Tuck did an episode about a powerful CEO having to see plastic surgeons for injuries incurred during sessions with a mistress.
More recently, Showtime's Billions portrays one of its leads, a high-powered district attorney, in a similar relationship with his wife, thus forcing us all to think about Paul Giamatti's penis. Again.
Johnny Depp's character in Blow shows no interest in kinky sex until he becomes rich. It's as if Hollywood thinks that as soon as you hit a certain income bracket, your first major investment is latex and butt plugs.
Rich People Bathe In Front Of Their Servants
There's a universal age where bathing stops being a group activity, and that age is about six. Yet Hollywood thinks the rich have transcended any modesty hang-ups we normals might have, and so can't get enough of bathing in front of their lessers. It was so cliche that it was already being parodied in Blazing Saddles ...
... and it hasn't disappeared. Most recently, it's shown up courtesy of Charlize Theron in Snow White And The Huntsman.
It might seem like a convenient excuse to roll out the beautiful naked women (and that may be part of it), but we also get to see John Goodman in all his glory in King Ralph, as well as Tony Montana. And Eddie Murphy stepped it up in Coming To America by employing a personal penis cleaner ...
We're not saying a wang washer isn't a vital hire; just that it's weird how often movies feel the need to show us this.
If You Own A Yacht, You Wear A Captain's Hat
According to movies, it's not enough to own a yacht. You have to broadcast that information 24/7 via a sweet captain's hat.
When Stewie decides to throw a "sexy party" on Family Guy, he dons the hat. A character on iCarly adopts the fashion after becoming successful. How I Met Your Mother featured a character known as "The Captain," pictured below, nowhere near a boat.
Here's the thing: Some of those characters don't even have the ability to legally pilot a boat, and if you own a yacht, odds are you have a crew. You are not, in fact, the captain. You are buying a yacht chiefly because you're so rich that you don't have to stand there and drive the boat like a chump. Why the silly hat?
All Rich Kids Are Crushingly Lonely
If there's one thing movies have taught us about rich kids, it's that endless money and opportunity will only ruin your life. These children are isolated, their parents don't care, and the other kids will have nothing to do with them, because being rich is ... embarrassing? Somehow? No matter that wealthy parents actually spend more time with their children than low-income parents, for a variety of obvious reasons. In movies, rich children are all so crushingly lonely that they have to hire friends.
In The Toy, a father literally buys Richard Pryor to be his son's live-in friend, because this was 1982 and it was still okay to make movies about buying black people.
Richie Rich's only friend is his butler, because his parents are too busy for him and the other kids really hate him. That one's probably fair; having a name like Richie Rich is just begging for a swirly.
The whole reason Red Mist becomes a villain in Kick-Ass is to win his wealthy gangster father's love (and precious bonding time).
It's the Wayne Principle: Either your parents die and you become a hero, or they live long enough to see you become a villain.
Michael Battaglino is a new contributor to Cracked.com. Be sure to check out some of his other work if you enjoyed this article.
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