The Year's Most Popular Movies Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Yet Aren't Listening.
A recurring motif permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion elected officials follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. Still the daily reports reveals constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
