This Year's Biggest Movies Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era 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 oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
