This Year's Top-Grossing Movies Told Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Still Refuse to Listen.

A familiar theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials follow a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.

Actually, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid