This Year's Biggest Blockbusters Instructed Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Continue to Aren't Listening.
A familiar motif runs through numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Every time elected officials react to a tragic gun violence event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered 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 executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
