2025's Top-Grossing Films Instructed Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Yet Aren't Listening.
A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring desperate poverty, while employing deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division quite that directly, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about global armageddon — for financial gain, needless to say.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — 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 headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.
Actually, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These stories are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will root out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A More Pointed Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid