2025's Biggest Films Urged Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Still Ignore the Message.
A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing a fortune to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top film, sets the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to core morality, and applaud the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies communicating the reverse.
If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like ethical parables, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and apparently 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 lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that the wealthy function with a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
