This Year's Top-Grossing Movies Told Us to Take Down the Elite Once More. We Still Aren't Listening.
A recurring motif permeates a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends far back to the days of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his immense fortune to smear Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul investing a fortune to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, the antagonist plays a wealthy villain running a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains live in clear extravagance while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them into unemployment and into bondage. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against tycoons, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is at odds with core morality, and exalt the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
However, inexplicably, we never get around to consuming the elite. Whenever elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news demonstrates regularly that a frightening percentage of Americans instinctively link affluence to competence and importance, even after one hundred years of history's most popular movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that gets in the way of substantive reform. Provided with a steady diet of largely happily-ever-after tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away content about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will root out any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
A Sharper Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they indeed follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel wealthy people were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under a separate justice system, and are very likely to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Significant Exclusions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
