2025's Biggest Films Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Yet Refuse to Listen.
A familiar theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
