This Year's Top-Grossing Movies Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Continue to Aren't Listening.
A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, 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 updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about justice being served. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the digital realm, 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
