This Year's Biggest Blockbusters Instructed Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Still Ignore the Message.

A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's genre movies. This notion that goes all the way back to the era of the Little Tramp. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering a fortune to throw the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Cinematic Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, pits the tough inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Remarkably, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, of course.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have disproportionate control, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.

The Outlet That Alters Little

And yet, for some reason, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively equate riches with smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.

If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that institutions function, and that plucky heroes will identify any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and apparently more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, 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 blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.

Key Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid