2025's Most Popular Movies Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Still Aren't Listening.
A recurring idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Tradition of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Every time politicians follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — certainly American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with competence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, 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 wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid