2025's Biggest Blockbusters Urged Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Yet Aren't Listening.

A familiar motif permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. 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 wealth is contrary to core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — 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 reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Provided with a regular dose of mostly 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 cautionary fables, suggesting that society is just, and that plucky heroes will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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 killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid