The Year's Top-Grossing Films Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Once More. We Still Aren't Listening.
A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed 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 affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself 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 redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
