This Year's Biggest Movies Told Us to Take Down the Elite Again. We Continue to Aren't Listening.

A familiar idea runs through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion that stretches all the way back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his enormous resources to defame Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a prehistoric death trap for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their dynasty's gain.

A Tradition of Cinematic Class Warfare

In *The Running Man*, the antagonist embodies a wealthy villain controlling a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people enduring extreme hardship, while using AI forgeries and a powerful smear campaign to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight economic inequality quite that directly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing movie, contrasts the tough people of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who live in extravagant sky-high mansions in the sky. Interestingly, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, needless to say.

It is not inherently notable in a string of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and everyday folks are heroes" as a theme goes back to the early days of film, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, authority figures, 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 updated that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with core morality, and applaud the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes demise of elite figures.

The Catharsis That Changes Nothing

And yet, for some reason, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Every time elected officials respond to a new mass shooting event by faulting popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that impressionable — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the collective psyche — certainly American society wouldn’t still worship billionaires. Still the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and value to society, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies communicating a contradictory message.

If anything, it seems like the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders real-world action. Offered a regular dose of mostly happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can leave the theater feeling good about right prevailing. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will root out any corrupt individuals among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.

An Angrier Edge in 2025

Even though 2025's movies aren’t new in that sense, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and seemingly more violent. It’s rarely enough nowadays to see rich people be taught a lesson about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were blown up 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 wine opener (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an rising rival (*Him*).

"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the driven away in cuffs ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with their own legal rules, and are very likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Rather, these villains are prone to die at the end of their movies, often in notably horrific, fitting ways.

Notable Exclusions

A few stories differ, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is only disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are unmasked as frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid