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The Emptiness of Modern "Eat the Rich" Cinema | The Backdrop (Patreon)

Published:
2026-03-10 15:26:06
Imported:
2026-03

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Check out the latest episode of The Backdrop from Darren Mooney.

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The Emptiness of Modern "Eat the Rich" Cinema | The Backdrop

The past couple of years have seen an explosion in "eat the rich" cinema, including The Menu, Ready or Not and now How to Make a Killing; these movies appeal to a very understandable anger in the collective consciousness, but they are also very limited; they recognize a fundamentally broken system, but cannot imagine a systemic fix; in the best movies, this leads to a sort of bleak nihilism that acknowledges the uselessness of these sorts of gestures, but more often than not it feels like a placebo, refusing to address the larger systemic issues. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SecondWindGroup Second Wind Merch: https://shop.secondwindgroup.com/

Comments

Ryallen

I think the problem with having this conversation, in any capacity, is the question of who has the power and what prevents them from exploiting it. Money is just a tangible and universal form of power and all of it is being hoarded by the upper class. We have a history of places in which power was not handled responsibly for an extended period of time and we can't comprehend a world in which power simply does not exist. There's always a narrative in which power is abused by those who have it, either by a group (large or small) or a single individual, through ignorance, anger, and arrogance and those are intrinsic problems with people rather than systemic ones. It's very hard to keep this on the topic of film, I've edited this comment a few times just to keep from going on a tangent

William Alexander

So glad I watched this! I had read Darren explore this topic before but this kept going and exploring new grounds. The ending was especially insightful for me. Amazon and co are glad to co-opt criticism of them and of eating the rich in general, but are probably more reluctant to go for anything that offers nihilism or an actual solution. Speaking of productive solutions in movies, we need more filmmakers like Spike Lee who are unafraid to get polemic. Go ahead and throw scenes of Black communities coming together and discussing the ugliness of racism or clips of white supremacists running over peaceful protesters in your popcorn movie (Black Kklansman in both cases). We need it!

Davsau

One trend with these movies that I find interesting is how the idea of the super rich as ‘great men’ has kind of evaporated. Less Machiavellian Bond villain, more Blackadder style inbreds.

Jason Youngberg

Capitalism co-opting the criticism is diabolical. It's a trap and there's no escape because people can't think of an alternative. Even a post-money Star Trek still has capitalism in some form.

Jason Youngberg

Me too. I had to strip it down to three sentences to stick to my point.

Pēteris Krišjānis

I have longer writing in mind, but my short answer is - for peaceful mind change for aggressive greed driven system has to come from inside, outside means violence, death and possible escalation. This colours lots of criticism and revenge fantasy. Capitalists appeal to everyone else not making a fuss and lots of eat the rich fantasies answer with "I will just burn everything down then". Capitalist and greed criticism is something that interests me great deal, also as a reflection point, how middle and rich class reacts to it.

Ubersupersloth

Even assuming society managed to form some kind of hyper idealised direct democracy where everyone has equal systemic power over society, there would still be people more powerful than others due to different levels of charisma. After all, if everyone has 1 vote and all votes are equal then the people who are most adept at manipulating the voting patterns of others (through subterfuge or rhetoric) will be the most powerful.

Pyrian

The "Great Men" narrative has been dying (it's not really dead) because many rich people actually believed it and started doing things like posting regularly on social media. "It is better to be thought a genius than to post on social media and be judged a fool."