This Year's Top-Grossing Movies Told Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing 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 demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
