One of the most enduring themes in Hollywood cinema since the Golden Age has been the satirization of the ultra-wealthy. Citizen Kane, widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, portrays its central character dying alone and isolated despite his immense riches. Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street similarly explores the highs and lows of extreme wealth, earning massive critical acclaim.
But anti-rich sentiment in cinema has been on a noticeable rise in recent years. A major kickstarter of this trend was Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 film Parasite, which follows the poor Kim family as they gradually infiltrate the wealthy Park household with devastating consequences. In the 2020s alone, there has been an influx of similarly themed stories: Knives Out: Glass Onion (and its predecessor Knives Out), The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Opus, Saltburn, Fresh, Sorry to Bother You…and the list goes on. Clearly, some political and cultural shift has made class conflict a hot-ticket theme in Hollywood. What caused this surge? And why do some of these films work so well while others fail spectacularly?
The easiest culprit to blame for this anti-rich shift is the COVID-19 pandemic: while the wealthy got wealthier, the poor got poorer, and the wealth divide widened. Beyond COVID, statistics show that the middle class is rapidly dwindling, and work now demands more hours for less pay than in previous generations. Naturally, this has fueled a growing desire among audiences to see the wealthy face some form of comeuppance, with the “little guy” finally coming out on top. In a time when billionaires are blasting themselves into space on a whim while the average person can barely afford eggs, the trend makes sense. And Hollywood has always been quick to cash in on marketable cultural and political shifts. If moviegoers want to see the rich knocked down a peg, studios will happily comply.
But the quality of these movies varies drastically. There’s a sharp divide between the “eat the rich” films that genuinely function as critiques of class consciousness and those that seem to have no real goal beyond capitalizing on a quick cultural shift.
Take Parasite, for example — the magnum opus, in my view, of what a critique of wealth inequality should be. Parasite works so well for several reasons. First, director Bong Joon-ho is no stranger to exploring capitalism and economic disparity. His earlier films, like Okja and Snowpiercer, tackle similar themes, and his most recent work, Mickey 17, uses a dystopian future to examine the exploitation of the working class. In other words, Parasite isn’t an outlier in his filmography. Bong also taps into a crucial ingredient in “eat the rich” storytelling: the wealthy Park family is kind, while the impoverished Kim family…not so much.
This contrast is a vital part of what makes Parasite work. Some critics argued that the personality differences between the wealthy and the poor families muddied Bong’s intentions, suggesting that the Kims’ takeover of the Park household felt unnecessary. But Bong makes the point explicit within the film: the Park family is kind because they live in a world that allows them to be kind. The Kim family isn’t because their circumstances simply don’t allow for it.
In a crucial scene, the Kims return home during a storm to find their house completely flooded and their belongings destroyed. The next day, as Mr. Kim drives the Park matriarch around, he stares grimly at the road while she happily tells her friend how wonderful the rain was for their lawn. The worlds these families inhabit couldn’t be more different.
So, Parasite has a layer that most of its successors lack: class conflict can’t be reduced to individual morality. The Parks aren’t cruel villains, and the Kims aren’t saints. Bong paints a world in which each family’s behavior is shaped by their circumstances, and the audience understands their actions through that lens. It’s a brilliant way to add nuance to the conversation about the wealth gap.
But other films don’t seem interested in this same nuance. Mistaking caricature for critique is a recipe for disaster when it comes to meaningful, insightful media. In many of these movies, the wealthy are portrayed as vapid, cruel, flamboyant and entirely unkind. It is so exaggerated that their individual morality becomes detached from their wealth.
Take Glass Onion, for example. While its predecessor, Knives Out, critiqued the dynamics between the wealthy and their employees when status is threatened, balancing humor and nuance, Glass Onion goes full-tilt into exaggeration; none of the wealthy characters are redeemable in any way, and as a result, its satire and criticism lose effectiveness. Saltburn similarly builds a narrative that revels in the grotesque excesses of its elite class, but its ending adds nothing meaningful to the conversation about wealth disparities. Instead, the rich are positioned as victims, and the film’s reliance on shock value blurs the line between indulgence and critique.
Filmmakers working within this theme need a fundamental understanding that class disparities aren’t just shorthand for villainy but rather are real structures that shape the lives of the people within them. There’s a line that must be walked between showcasing the extravagance of the wealthy and the conditions of the poor — the flood scene in Parasite is a prime example.
A film that fails to strike this balance is The Menu, where we spend nearly the entire story among the wealthy elite and learn little about our protagonist beyond the fact that she’s poor. This imbalance makes it impossible for the film to offer a meaningful critique. Class becomes set dressing rather than a force that shapes the characters.
Parasite and even Knives Out demonstrate this balance both materially and psychologically. The Parks and the wealthy Thrombey family not only have access to enormous wealth, but also to the emotional security of knowing they will never truly struggle. In contrast, the Kims and undocumented Marta live with the constant fear that their position in life could shatter at any moment. This tension is the crux of a good class-critique film.
This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy the majority of these movies (with the exception of Saltburn — a film I despised so intensely I’ve already written an entire article about it). They’re entertaining, and I’ve rewatched most of them multiple times. But they don’t provide meaningful societal commentary, and while that isn’t a requirement for all films, I do think that when you center a movie around such a hot-button issue, you should have something to add to the conversation.
Ultimately, the rise in “eat the rich” films reflects audiences’ desire to watch the systems that oppress them fail, even if only in fiction. Not every film needs to be Parasite, but movies marketed as class-conscious should offer something more substantial than “rich bad, poor good.” What makes the rich bad? What makes the poor good? Most recent releases aren’t interested in answering. Increasingly, it’s clear that this wave of films stems less from a desire to interrogate the social structures that uphold inequality and more from an urge to cash in on a cultural shift guaranteed to generate online buzz. The result is a flood of entertainment that adopts the aesthetic of consciousness without ever truly engaging with it.