The Year's Top-Grossing Films Told Us to Eat the Rich Once More. We Still Aren't Listening.

A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches far back to the days of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

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 suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.

It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid