The Year's Biggest Blockbusters Told Us to Take Down the Elite Again. We Continue to Aren't Listening.
An age-old idea permeates many of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that stretches all the way back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul squandering a fortune to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their own profit.
A Tradition of Film Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin plays a rich antagonist operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn’t emphasize wealth disparity quite that directly, but its villains live in obvious luxury while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, driving them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit extravagant gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update of *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
There’s nothing inherently notable in a series of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished Little Tramp character against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with basic human values, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Release That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that impressionable — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the headlines demonstrates constantly that a alarming number of Americans instinctively associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the opposite.
If anything, it seems like the never-ending cycle of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders substantive reform. Offered a regular dose of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about good conquering evil. These stories are like moral fairy tales, pretending that society is just, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any malicious actors among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
An Angrier Edge in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that regard, they do follow some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more specific, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, avaricious, malicious 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 distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so clear that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to meet their end at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Key Exclusions
There are exceptions, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. 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 exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
