2025's Biggest Movies Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Once More. We Still Aren't Listening.
A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
