The Year's Top-Grossing Blockbusters Urged Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Continue to Aren't Listening.
An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them into unemployment and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the lighthearted comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, industrialists, and inept, drunken millionaires. From 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 entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians respond to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious regularly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly uplifting tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater 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 bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, 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 wealthy people were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, teasing that he is 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 unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
