Times where The Elites Jump Ship — or attempt to, anyway — in Films.
Animated Films:
- The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: President Business leaves to play golf during the alien invasion at the beginning of the film.
Live-Action Films:
- In 2012, the social and political elite flee to secretly built Arks to save themselves and leave the rest of the world to rot, even the builders of the Arks. The governments of the world knew beforehand of the calamity that would cause planetary upheaval and countless death but didn't tell anyone even after it started, assassinating everyone who tried to tell people the truth, except for obvious nutjobs like Charlie Frost. Explained as being the only way they could build any Arks without the place being swarmed by refugees, terrorists, renegade army units, etc. that would jeopardize any humans surviving. Though a message is later sent out to the rich and elite to make their way to China so they can board boats and literally ride out the coming apocalypse. The main character, a lowly limo driver/struggling novelist, manages to stumble on the plot by complete accident and seeks to get his family on board as well.
- Captive State: The aliens' resource exploitation threatens to leave Earth a husk and at least some of their high society collaborators are aware of this and hope to be taken off-planet for their service.
- Proposed in Dr. Strangelove when it is suggested that the military and political elite retreat to deep mine shafts to avoid the coming nuclear war. Since they are older men, it's suggested that they take 10 young women each to restock humanity. The Doomsday device wipes them all out before the idea can be implemented.
- Chariot: The setting is a plane designed to evacuate 191 people of power and importance (and not their families) in the event of a nuclear strike without their knowledge. Yet when the plane takes off only 7 passengers, some of them unimportant, are aboard. In the end, it turns out there has been no catastrophe, and their only onboard to test whether or not the idea would work without the passengers rioting. It doesn't.
- The Colony (2021): Earth's wealthy fled to a new planet as cataclysms ravaged Earth but are forced to contemplate returning to Earth due to women being unable to get pregnant on their new homeworld.
- Contagion (2011): Downplayed. The government is largely portrayed positively but there is one scene when recourses needed for an important CDC scientist are instead hogged by a sick congressman. Other politicians also relocate underground although by that point there's not much they could do by staying up there without getting sick and there is an implicit need for someone in power to remain healthy to avoid anarchy.
- Don't Look Up: The Hate Sink politicians and industrialists who greedily bungle the efforts to destroy a meteor approaching Earth flee in a luxurious starship before Earth is destroyed. They get attacked by native animals as soon as they land on a new planet.
- In Elysium, the people living on the space station Elysium are the wealthy and The Beautiful Elite, due to being far away from the harsh environment on Earth, not having to lift a finger to work, and especially due to the advanced healing machines they have access to. Earth is devastated and overpopulated and the people who still live on it are destitute and sick. The Elysium population do not care about the people on Earth and will stop at nothing to maintain the distinct separation between the two classes of people and prevent immigration.
- End Of The World: As a solar flare threatens the world, a scientist tasked with building survival bunkers is put in a mental institution for protesting about how the bunker space is being reserved for rich people. The Genre Savvy main characters are quick to compare the situation to 2012.
- Greenland: Referenced and downplayed. When the government selects people to be evacuated to shelters before a Colony Drop, Ralph complains that they're probably all rich people. Actually, the government is picking people based on their skills to rebuild society (and none of them have any idea the evacuation is going on until right before the cataclysm). Still, at least some of them (such as John, a building engineer with a nice house, and Colin's mother, a doctor) have jobs with upper-class incomes.
- In the opening scene of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the Master of Laketown loads all his treasure up in a boat and flees the town as Smaug attacks. This amusingly gets him Laser-Guided Karma: when Bard kills Smaug, the dying dragon lands on the Master's boat, sinking it and crushing everyone on board.
- Hotel Artemis dances around this but remains true to the principle. During a city-wide riot caused by class divisions, the local millionaires hunker down or flee town while sending their servants to brave the crowds with the hidden valuables they want safely stashed at the bank.
- Kingsman: The Secret Service; lightly zig-zagged, as it's less that they're all jumping ship and more that some of them are choosing to sign up with, and some are just being kidnapped by, the Big Bad. The film implies that the President of the United States, most of the British Royal Family, and Elon Musk are all on board.
- Land of the Dead: The Zombie Apocalypse survivors in Pennsylvania are holed up inside of Citadel City with a Fantastic Caste System between the rich and poor. Once that city is breached, the leader of the wealthy elites orders that the poor people be left for themselves, shoots and loots a co-leader who argued with this proposal, and then tries to flee in a limo with all the money he has.
- Miracle Mile: This trope is referenced and used in order to avert a Cassandra Truth situation. A guy named Harry trying to meet his girlfriend at a diner gets a wrong number call from a soldier telling him that America and Russia are shooting missiles at each other and World War III is upon them. Harry goes inside the diner and tells everyone else what he heard. As the patrons skeptically debate about his claim, a businesswoman named Landa takes out her phone and tries to dial all of the local politicians she knows, discovering that they've all abruptly fled the country without so much as a warning to the public. This convinces most of the people in the diner to make a beeline out of town themselves and/or try to warn people. Interestingly, they themselves arguably kick off a second wave of this (making a list of Mensa members and scientists to alert to flee and rebuild society elsewhere, and warning a lot of Yuppie friends of Landa who are seen waiting on a helipad) although The Law of Conservation of Detail and the fact that masses of people are seen finding out and trying to get out of the city by the end indicate that non-elites were warned off-screen as well.
- No Blade of Grass: As most of the world descends into starvation and anarchy after the death of most plants, a radio report mentions that various European monarchs and government officials have fled to North America and received asylum.
- In Resident Evil: The Final Chapter the upper echelons of the Umbrella Corporation are waiting out the Zombie Apocalypse as Human Popsicles in The Hive. It's revealed that they deliberately released the T-virus in the first place, thinking the world was inevitably doomed through nuclear war or environmental disaster, so this way they got to do it on their terms.
- Zigzagged in Rubikon. The world is enveloped in a Fog of Doom, and the people on the eponymous space station contact an airdome where 300 executives for the corporation they work for have taken shelter after being evacuated there by the soldiers of their private army. Hannah Wagner asks to speak to one of the soldiers in the faint hope that her sister might be among them, only to be told they had been left outside the dome to die once they had "fulfilled their duty". However Gavin Abbott, who's the son of an executive, notes that his father isn't in the dome either, despite his wealth and position.
- In Snowpiercer, the titular train was originally intended to save only the richest people and those who served them and maintained their lifestyles after an experimental attempt to stop global warming ended up causing an ice age. It's only down to luck that lower-class people managed to find the train and seek refuge aboard.
- Stake Land: In the backstory, it's mentioned that America's politicians fled to save themselves when the vampire outbreak hit its peak rather than attempt to provide leadership.
- Subverted in Thirteen Days, set during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Robert Kennedy is discussing the evacuation plans that have been put in place for the White House staffers and their families. Special IDs have been issued, and when notification calls are made, they will meet at designated staging areas to be transported to the Mount Weather bunker, where those on duty at the White House will meet them later... but all this is just for morale because if a nuclear missile is actually launched from Cuba it will only take five minutes to reach Washington.
- Thor: Love and Thunder: When Gorr the God Butcher began his rampage, the most powerful and influential gods retreated to Omnipotence City, where they could wait in safety and decadence for him to die. The death of lower gods like Rapu and the chaos created by their passing are of no concern to a god such as Zeus.
- Titanic (1943): This film features the director of the White Star line and the British first-class passengers causing the collision with the iceberg through greedy recklessness and then taking all of the lifeboats off the sinking ship in the most selfish and cruel way possible. The fact that this was a Nazi Propaganda movie has not kept this version of events from recurring through popular culture while ignoring other factors such as the fact that many of the first-class passengers did in fact stay and die while others left the ship before the scope of the disaster was realized.
- When Worlds Collide: Both played straight and averted. Corrupt Corporate Executive Leland Stanton will only finance the (very limited) Homeworld Evacuation in exchange for himself being included in it, but two other construction tycoons, Marsden and Spiro, finance it while explicitly stating that they don't want any seats on the rocket wasted on them. In the end, Stanton ends up being forced to stay behind to ensure the rocket has enough fuel.
