2025's Top-Grossing Movies Told Us to Eat the Rich Once More. We Still Refuse to Listen.
An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through extreme hardship, while leveraging digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around 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 rich people have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more direct, and observably more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid