2025's Top-Grossing Films Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Once More. We Continue to Ignore the Message.

A recurring theme permeates many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that goes back in time to the era of silent film comedy. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his enormous resources to defame Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Class Warfare

Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gleaming towers in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies assuming as fact that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for more wealth. "Rich people are villains and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a concept dates back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the entire history of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and applaud the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Alters Little

However, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a public shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of cinema's biggest movies conveying a contradictory message.

Actually, it looks as though the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A More Pointed Tone in 2025

Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people operate under different standards, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending fails to deliver anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid