The Year's Biggest Movies Told Us to Eat the Rich Yet Again. We Yet Aren't Listening.

A recurring idea runs through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with 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 rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time lawmakers respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.

Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exceptions

A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid