2025's Biggest Blockbusters Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Once More. We Continue to Ignore the Message.

A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people living in abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about wealth disparity quite that directly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — to make money, of course.

There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Message in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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