This Year's Top-Grossing Movies Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Yet Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
An age-old theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after 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 cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
