The Year's Biggest Films Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Still Ignore the Message.
A familiar theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — to make money, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Changes Nothing
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the headlines makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent 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* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
