Less Than You Desire, But More Than You Deserve: Three Films About Rich People

They want us to hate them. We should oblige.

Hollywood’s apparent mistrust of the rich has always been cynical and insincere. Rich people know that an effective way to part poor people with their money is to produce a commodity that also seems to hate rich people. A commodity can’t actually hate anything of course. But the rich people who produce them certainly want us to think it can. And in the past year, when everything other than the most mindless Marvel bullshit struggled at the box office, studio executives are more than happy to lean into this tried-and-true trope.

You see, a necessary part of the studio business schema is the “prestige film.” Not to make money necessarily, but to make the executives feel like they’re still making art. Major studio executives are an insecure type. They know that no matter how many yes-men they surround themselves with, no matter how many oceanside mansions they collect, no matter how many people they’ve made and ruined, there will inevitably come that moment, probably at one of their count…