The Year's Biggest Films Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Yet Refuse to Listen.
An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's popular films. This concept which extends far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Lineage of Cinematic Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, sets the tough people of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies presupposing that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, 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 reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
