The Year's Top-Grossing Films Instructed Us to Take Down the Elite Yet Again. We Yet Aren't Listening.
A familiar motif courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion 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 mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for his own profit. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Lineage of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight wealth disparity quite that directly, but its evil characters enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, pushing them out of jobs and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, somehow, we never get around to consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at 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 wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the headlines demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with intelligence and importance, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a safety outlet that gets in the way of real-world action. Offered a regular dose of predominantly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, 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, pretending that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more lethal. 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 lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially grotesque, ironic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up banished to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
