The Year's Most Popular Blockbusters Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Yet Aren't Listening.
A recurring theme permeates numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated propaganda machine to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, 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 refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Release That Alters Little
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and social worth, even after a century of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any corrupt individuals among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and apparently more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exclusions
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
