The Year's Most Popular Films Told Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Continue to Ignore the Message.

An age-old motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about wealth disparity as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.

There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with competence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a regular dose of largely uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

An Angrier Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Significant Exclusions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid