The Year's Top-Grossing Movies Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Yet Aren't Listening.
An age-old motif runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that stretches far back to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality as overtly, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the scrappy people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding hunger for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they indeed follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, 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 rich individuals were slaughtered 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 executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
Some films diverge, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
