2025's Biggest Films Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Continue to Refuse to Listen.
A familiar theme courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the resourceful residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and importance, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Notable Exclusions
Some films diverge, of course. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
