2025's Biggest Films Instructed Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Yet Refuse to Listen.

A familiar theme permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Film Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.

It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting a contradictory message.

If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Given a regular dose of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exceptions

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid