The Year's Biggest Films Instructed Us to Take Down the Elite Once More. We Still Aren't Listening.

A recurring motif courses through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro squandering vast sums to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.

A Legacy of Cinematic Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters live in obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing box-office hit, pits the tough people of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.

There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against tycoons, 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 refreshed that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is contrary to core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, routing, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Outlet That Fails to Transform

And yet, somehow, we never actually taking down the wealthy. On each occasion lawmakers follow a public shooting event by pointing fingers at violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society wouldn’t still revere billionaires. But the daily reports makes it obvious regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with smartness and social worth, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.

In fact, it seems like the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, 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 root out any malicious actors among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

A More Pointed Message in 2025

Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough in the current era to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they subjugated, 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 enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."

The "behind bars" resolution fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.

Significant Outliers

There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid