🔗 Share this article 2025's Biggest Films Urged Us to Eat the Rich Yet Again. We Still Aren't Listening. A familiar idea permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends back in time to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit. A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while using deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, of course. There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures. The Outlet That Fails to Transform Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite. In fact, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps. A Sharper Edge in 2025 But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly 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 forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*). "Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom." The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways. Significant Exclusions Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, 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 redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid