The Year's Top-Grossing Films Instructed Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Continue to Ignore the Message.

An age-old theme runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his vast wealth to smear Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending vast sums to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their own profit.

A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while using deepfakes and a sophisticated propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.

It is not especially new in a string of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept dates back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and applaud the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.

The Release That Alters Little

However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the reverse.

If anything, it appears that the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like ethical parables, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they certainly adhere to some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a 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, avaricious, malicious rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by different standards, and are very likely to buy their way out."

The "arrested and awaiting trial" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.

Notable Exceptions

Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid