The Year's Most Popular Movies Instructed Us to Take Down the Elite Once More. We Yet Aren't Listening.
A recurring idea courses through numerous 2025's popular films. This notion which extends far back to the era of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for his own profit. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, of course.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that the wealthy have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is contrary to fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Release That Fails to Transform
Nevertheless, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I roll my eyes, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. But the daily reports demonstrates every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it looks as though the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a steady diet of mostly triumphant tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about justice being served. These films are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that the wealthy live by their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" outcome no longer satisfies anymore. Instead, these villains are likely to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, 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 wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid