This Year's Biggest Films Told Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Continue to Aren't Listening.
An age-old motif courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with 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 greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. Still the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of mostly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under 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 particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
