The Year's Biggest Films Told Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Still Refuse to Listen.
An age-old motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that stretches far back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. Whenever politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly 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 persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death 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 affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
