This Year's Top-Grossing Movies Told Us to Consume the Wealthy Yet Again. We Continue to Aren't Listening.

A familiar idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches far back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and set her up for murder, all for their own profit.

A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity

In *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, sets the tough residents of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Interestingly, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to bring about planetary doom — for his own profit, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and celebrate the defusing, routing, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever lawmakers respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people really were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the opposite.

In fact, it seems like the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely triumphant fables where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These movies are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any malicious actors among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It is seldom sufficient in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."

The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Outliers

Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly 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 culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid