The Year's Biggest Films Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This notion that stretches far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about class division quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates 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. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time politicians follow a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Notable Exceptions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid