2025's Biggest Movies Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Once More. We Continue to Aren't Listening.
A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing 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 struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. 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, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
