The Year's Biggest Blockbusters Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Still Refuse to Listen.
A familiar motif courses through a host of 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes back in time to the days of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to fundamental decency, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, teasing that he is 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
