2025's Biggest Movies Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Yet Aren't Listening.
A recurring motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, suggesting that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson 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, avaricious, malicious wealthy people were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
