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

A familiar idea runs through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich 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 Lineage of Film Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.

There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with early comedies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised 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 take it for granted that riches is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility 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 eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death 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 affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exceptions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid