This Year's Top-Grossing Movies Told Us to Take Down the Elite Once More. We Still Aren't Listening.
A recurring idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. It's an idea which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his immense fortune to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the antagonist is a privileged biotech mogul squandering tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of ultra-rich lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Wealth Disparity
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate plays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by preying upon and eliminating people living in abject destitution, while leveraging AI forgeries and a sophisticated smear campaign to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight wealth disparity in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, contrasts the resourceful people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant gold-and-jade palaces above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted humorous remake *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that the wealthy have disproportionate control, are devoid of conscience, and a endless, demanding hunger for increased fortune. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is contrary to basic human values, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually eating the rich. Whenever lawmakers react to a new mass shooting event by faulting violent video games, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. And yet the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a significant portion of Americans instinctively associate wealth with intelligence and social worth, even after decades of history's most popular movies communicating a contradictory message.
Actually, it appears that the endless parade of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that hinders real-world action. Given a steady diet of predominantly triumphant tales where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like cautionary fables, implying that society is just, and that plucky heroes will weed out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, more incisive, more direct, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under different standards, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "behind bars" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Exclusions
There are exceptions, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the computer world, 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 reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
