The Year's Most Popular Movies Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Still Aren't Listening.
A recurring idea permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the news reveals constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
