2025's Top-Grossing Films Told Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Continue to Aren't Listening.

A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.

It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Release That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.

If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.

Key Exclusions

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid