This Year's Biggest Movies Instructed Us to Take Down the Elite Yet Again. We Still Aren't Listening.
A familiar motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept that goes far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire using his enormous resources to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a prehistoric arena for his own profit. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Tradition of Film Class Warfare
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through extreme hardship, while using digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them from their homes and into cages or slavery. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in lavish sky-high mansions in the sky. Remarkably, the zany humorous remake *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to cause worldwide catastrophe — for his own profit, naturally.
It is not especially new in a series of movies taking it as a given that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a plot device stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive tech-bro villain, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that affluence is contrary to core morality, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Catharsis That Changes Nothing
However, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. Every time politicians react to a new mass shooting event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that susceptible — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — surely American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. And yet the daily reports makes it obvious constantly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously equate riches with smartness and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying the reverse.
In fact, it looks as though the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Provided with a steady diet of predominantly happily-ever-after stories where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about good conquering evil. These movies are like cautionary fables, pretending that society is just, and that determined protagonists will identify any bad apples among the mostly industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
An Angrier Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, more pointed, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient nowadays 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, avaricious, malicious affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are very likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid