2025's Top-Grossing Blockbusters Instructed Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Yet Aren't Listening.
An age-old idea permeates a host of 2025's popular films. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for his own profit, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Alters Little
However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually 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 every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory 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 subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to perish at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator 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* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
