The Year's Biggest Blockbusters Urged Us to Eat the Rich Once More. We Continue to Refuse to Listen.
A recurring idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These stories are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, 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 affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
