The Year's Biggest Films Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Continue to Aren't Listening.
An age-old idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to cast the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity as overtly, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence 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 top film, pits the tough residents of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
It is not particularly surprising in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, 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 updated the exact same bit for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly uplifting tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away feeling good about justice being served. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that determined protagonists will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they do follow some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people learn a useful lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful wealthy people were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a wine opener (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so clear that rich people live by a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exclusions
Some films diverge, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 unmasked as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid