2025's Biggest Films Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, driving them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel 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 shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
