This Year's Most Popular Blockbusters Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Yet Ignore the Message.

An age-old theme permeates many of 2025's genre movies. This concept which extends far back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's superhero icon while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a rich antagonist running a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, sets the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to trigger planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor beloved underdog against corporate bosses, industrialists, 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 revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers follow a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — certainly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.

If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that the wealthy operate under a separate justice system, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Key Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid