The Year's Biggest Films Told Us to Eat the Rich Yet Again. We Still Ignore the Message.

An age-old idea courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era 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 packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.

Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exceptions

A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid