This Year's Most Popular Blockbusters Instructed Us to Eat the Rich Again. We Still Refuse to Listen.

A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.

It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Alters Little

And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people actually 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 persistently worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid