This Year's Biggest Films Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Once More. We Continue to Refuse to Listen.
A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of largely uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the virtual grid, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
