The Year's Biggest Blockbusters Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Yet Aren't Listening.
An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time politicians respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the headlines demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*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 directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
