2025's Biggest Films Urged Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Yet Refuse to Listen.
An age-old theme courses through many of 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes back in time to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending a fortune to cast the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people enduring abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists enjoy conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
And yet, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of largely triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, suggesting that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a wine opener (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid