The Year's Most Popular Movies Urged Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Still Aren't Listening.

A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes far back to the days of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its antagonists enjoy clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, needless to say.

There is little particularly surprising in a run of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept goes back to the early days of film, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the defusing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.

The Catharsis That Fails to Transform

However, somehow, we never actually consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals constantly that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.

Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a frequent serving of mostly triumphant stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exceptions

There are exceptions, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses 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