This Year's Top-Grossing Blockbusters Urged Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.
There is little particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the early days of film, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated 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 assume that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to eating the rich. Whenever politicians follow a public shooting event by faulting graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. Still the news reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
