This Year's Top-Grossing Films Instructed Us to Take Down the Elite Yet Again. We Still Ignore the Message.

A familiar idea runs through a host of 2025's genre movies. This concept that stretches all the way back to the days of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the evil force is a greedy, heartless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the antagonist is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to throw the heroes into a monster-filled danger zone for his own profit. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, solely for their own profit.

A Legacy of Film Wealth Disparity

In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated smear campaign to depict them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists reside in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the scrappy residents of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who dwell in opulent gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's scheme to trigger worldwide catastrophe — to make money, needless to say.

There’s nothing particularly surprising in a series of movies assuming as fact that the wealthy have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a bottomless, entitled appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and everyday folks are heroes" as a concept goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against tycoons, industrialists, and bumbling wealthy fools. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which take it for granted that affluence is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, inexplicably, we never get around to eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials follow a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people truly were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — surely American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. Still the news makes it obvious constantly that a frightening percentage of Americans innately associate wealth with smartness and importance, even after one hundred years of the world's most beloved movies conveying the reverse.

Actually, it looks as though the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a safety outlet that hinders meaningful change. Offered a regular dose of predominantly triumphant tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can leave the theater satisfied about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any bad apples among the largely industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.

A Sharper Edge in 2025

But while 2025's movies are not novel in that regard, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more violent. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people gain some humility in empathy, 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, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face directly on national television (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and beaten to death by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail finale, likely due to it’s become so apparent that the wealthy function with their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to meet their end at the end of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.

Key Outliers

A few stories differ, undoubtedly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Sinful schemer Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the virtual grid, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid