2025's Biggest Movies Instructed Us to Take Down the Elite Again. We Yet Refuse to Listen.
A recurring theme runs through a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends all the way back to the era of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's greatest hero while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir squandering vast sums to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and framed her for murder, solely for their own profit.
A Legacy of Film Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people living in extreme hardship, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters reside in conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into bondage. The box-office champion *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy residents of a impoverished farm town against arrogant elites who live in lavish gleaming towers floating overhead. Interestingly, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a string of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a insatiable, privileged appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept stretches back to the birth of movies, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor iconic vagrant against corporate bosses, bosses, and bumbling wealthy fools. From 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 tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is at odds with basic human values, and applaud the defusing, routing, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
And yet, inexplicably, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. On each occasion elected officials react to a public shooting event by blaming popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — surely American society would not persistently worship billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans subconsciously link affluence to smartness and importance, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies promoting the reverse.
If anything, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes meaningful change. Given a steady diet of largely uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These movies are like moral fairy tales, pretending that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Edge in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting angrier, more incisive, more specific, and seemingly more fatal. It’s rarely enough these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, 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 rich individuals were eliminated by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to negotiate their release."
The "off to face justice" ending isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Exceptions
Some films diverge, undoubtedly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up exiled to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* loses all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
