This Year's Most Popular Films Told Us to Take Down the Elite Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
A familiar idea permeates numerous 2025's popular films. It's an idea which extends all the way back to the era of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while orchestrating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro spending a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s life-changing idea and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in desperate poverty, while using deepfakes and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one box-office hit, sets the resourceful residents of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit opulent gleaming towers above the clouds. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, 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 the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — surely American society would not continue to revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that hinders substantive reform. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured 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 wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car finale, possibly since it’s become so obvious that rich people operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is redeemed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
