American Psycho is excellent though, if someone walks out of that film thinking Bateman is a cool guy then there's probably not much hope for them
American Psycho is excellent though, if someone walks out of that film thinking Bateman is a cool guy then there's probably not much hope for them
Actually Star Wars is one of the IPs I was thinking about. Nowhere in Star Wars film has there ever been a serious critique of the underlying economic system of the Empire. It's always been this nebulous corruption, bureaucracy, and authoritarianism which are bad things, but without the economic critique, chuds of all stripes could easily read the heroes as themselves. Something like the prison arc in Andor maybe gets close, but even that doesn't really critique economic relations, only political ones.
Both "Phantom Menace" and "The Last Jedi" imply the nature of the Republic/Empire as one of rapacious merchantilism. "New Hope" describes Tatooine as a frontier colony and trading outpost between Hutt Space and the Core Worlds. "Empire Strikes Back" also implies Bespin is a frontier colony profiting from resource extraction.
The focus of the films tends to be the ongoing civil war and associated military campaigns. But you can regularly see the edges of an economic picture - one of space faring civilizations spreading out into a galactic frontier in pursuit of new resources to mine for the benefit of the Core Worlds.