The Year's Biggest Blockbusters Told Us to Take Down the Elite Again. We Continue to Aren't Listening.
A familiar motif courses through many of 2025's popular films. It's an idea that stretches back in time to the time of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's greatest hero while controlling world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that makes millions by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging deepfakes and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its villains enjoy obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful people of a struggling farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plot to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies contrasting his chronically destitute iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and celebrate the defusing, defeat, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we consistently fail to eating the rich. On each occasion lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting 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 — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news demonstrates every single day that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to competence and social worth, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that gets in the way of meaningful change. Provided with a regular dose of mostly uplifting stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can finish the film feeling good about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Message in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they indeed follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and observably more lethal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson 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 wealthy people were eliminated by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*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 bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to perish at the conclusion of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exceptions
A few stories differ, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, teasing that he is being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
