The Year's Biggest Blockbusters Told Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Yet Refuse to Listen.
An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There is little inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming 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 public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the headlines reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
