2025's Biggest Blockbusters Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Again. We Continue to Refuse to Listen.

A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's beneficial creation and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity as overtly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Even, the agreeably goofy humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to trigger global armageddon — for financial gain, naturally.

There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Release That Changes Nothing

And yet, somehow, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the news demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.

If anything, it seems like the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a frequent serving of largely uplifting fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy operate under different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exclusions

Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid