This Year's Biggest Blockbusters Instructed Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
A familiar idea courses through many of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes substantive reform. Offered a steady diet of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These stories are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
