2025's Biggest Films Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Yet Aren't Listening.

A recurring motif runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This concept that goes all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains reside in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who live in opulent gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — for financial gain, of course.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for more wealth. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme dates back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates regularly that a significant portion of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.

Actually, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.

A Sharper Tone in 2025

Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that rich people function with a separate justice system, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid