The Year's Biggest Blockbusters Urged Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion which extends far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent sky-high mansions above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with early comedies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and observably more fatal. It is seldom sufficient 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 exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
