2025's Most Popular Films Told Us to Eat the Rich Yet Again. We Continue to Refuse to Listen.

An age-old theme runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.

It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.

The Release That Alters Little

And yet, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the reverse.

Actually, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

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

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. 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 revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid