This Year's Biggest Films Told Us to Take Down the Elite Once More. We Yet Aren't Listening.
A recurring theme permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends all the way back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a well-honed media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in obvious luxury while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, of course.
There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device goes back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised 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 assume that affluence is at odds with fundamental decency, and applaud the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
However, inexplicably, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with intelligence and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a relief valve that impedes substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy live by different standards, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in especially brutal, poetic ways.
Key Exceptions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
