This Year's Biggest Films Urged Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Continue to Ignore the Message.
A recurring theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding desire for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 revised the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — certainly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the daily reports reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of real-world action. Given a steady diet of mostly triumphant stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously 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 frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
