The Year's Most Popular Blockbusters Told Us to Eat the Rich Yet Again. We Still Ignore the Message.
A recurring idea courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that goes all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and set her up for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, contrasts the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, of course.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a tragic gun violence event by blaming popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies promoting a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a relief valve that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a 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 rich individuals were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
