The Year's Biggest Films Told Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Yet Aren't Listening.
A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From 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 Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
