2025's Biggest Movies Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Yet Aren't Listening.
A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs 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 haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
