2025's Top-Grossing Movies Told Us to Eat the Rich Yet Again. We Still Ignore the Message.

An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a steady diet of predominantly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater content about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, 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 eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to negotiate their release."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid