In honor of the movie Coyote vs. Acme, this article presents a list of anti-capitalist movies from the last 40 years. The text highlights four films that critique corporate power and consumerism: RoboCop (1987), where a company essentially runs a police department; They Live (1988), which depicts aliens manipulating humans to consume and conform; Fight Club (1999), in which society conditions people to buy and own things that ultimately control them; and Michael Clayton (2007), a thriller about corporate malfeasance. The article's focus is on films that "stick it to the corporate man," with a brief nod to their influence and relevance today.
Written by the local model on 2026-08-28,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
In honour of Coyote vs. Acme, we salute some excellent anti-capitalist movies
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we → salute → movies
Looney Tunes feature is latest entry in long line of films that stick it to the corporate man
Wile E. Coyote has employed every conceivable gadget in his fruitless, decades-long pursuit of the Road Runner.
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Coyote → stick → Runner
What if the company behind such items as the "Instant Tunnel" and the "Do-It-Yourself Tornado Kit" just makes bad products?
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company → make → products
That's the premise of Coyote vs. Acme, in which our hapless hero engages an equally hapless lawyer to take on the Acme Corporation in court for the physical suffering he's endured using their products.
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he → engage → products
The film finally hits theatres Friday after taking a circuitous route to the big screen.
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film → hit → screen
(Completed in 2023, it was shelved by Warner Bros. Discovery as a tax write-off, and only revived when independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment bought the rights last year.
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Entertainment → complete → rights
To celebrate the spirit of the film, we've catalogued our favourite anti-capitalist movies from the last 40 years.
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we → celebrate → years
RoboCop (1987)
A once-outlandish film that feels more like a documentary with every passing year, Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop imagines a near future where a company called Omni Consumer Products essentially runs the Detroit police department.
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company → feel → department
Omni's killer app is the titular man-machine (played with deadpan sass by Peter Weller), who soon learns of the brutal lengths Omni executive Dick Jones is willing to go to scale the corporate ladder.
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Jones → play → ladder
The only complication: Robocop has been expressly programmed not to harm Omni executives.
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Robocop → program → executives
Money quote: "What did you think? That you were an ordinary police officer?
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you → think → What
You're our product, and we can't very well have our products turning against us, can we?
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we → have → us
They Live (1988)
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They → live → ?
In John Carpenter's iconic sci-fi pic, a blue-collar schlub (Roddy Piper) finds a special pair of sunglasses that allow him to see what's really going on: that a race of aliens is passing as humans and transmitting subliminal messages telling people to consume and conform.
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race → find → people
And why are these dastardly extra-terrestrials doing this?
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terrestrials → do → this
To distract us while they pillage the planet's resources.
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they → distract → resources
The Earth is just another developing planet.
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Earth → develop → ?
Fight Club (1999)
Something of a spiritual sequel to They Live, Fight Club also posits that society conditions us to buy, buy, buy.
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society → live → us
This realization doesn't sit well with the unnamed protagonist (Edward Norton), who meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), an enigmatic stranger (or is he?) who suggests the only way to feel alive in this consumer hellscape is to punch the crap out of other people (in the spirit of camaraderie, of course).
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way → sit → course
Their fight club soon branches out into anti-capitalist violence, culminating in the epic demolition of several bank towers to the strains of the Pixies' Where Is My Mind?
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Mind → branch → Pixies
Money quote: "The things you own end up owning you."
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you → own → you
This film is a bracing indictment of how far corporations will go to hide their guilt.
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corporations → brace → guilt
George Clooney stars as a fixer conscripted to help a law firm representing U-North, the defendant in a multibillion-dollar class-action lawsuit over a pesticide that killed several people.
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that → star → people
The scene in which two assassins wordlessly dispatch a lawyer who possesses incriminating evidence against U-North is one of the most cold-blooded moments in cinematic history.
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who → dispatch → history
It's the 29th century, and rapacious consumerism has made Earth uninhabitable for everyone but our trash-compacting hero, WALL-E.
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Earth → make → hero
Meanwhile, humans have moved to massive spaceships like the Axiom, operated by the conglomerate Buy N Large, which ensures they spend their days devouring obscene amounts of fast food and trash TV.
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they → move → food
In this mind-bending satire from director Boots Riley (an avowed communist), a Black everyman named Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) lands a job as a telemarketer and finds his impeccable "white" accent is a ticket to huge sales.
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accent → bend → sales
A promotion puts him at odds with his unionizing colleagues but brings him in league with the CEO, who reveals that the multi-pronged conglomerate has been breeding a slave labour force of half-humans, half-horses called "Equisapiens."
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conglomerate → put → humans
Money quote: "Let me give you a tip.
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me → let → tip
You wanna make some money here?
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You → make → money
A group of idealistic youngsters determines the best way to challenge the hegemony of the fossil fuel industry is to take out some of its infrastructure.
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way → determine → infrastructure
Alas, that requires stealth, discretion and an ability to handle explosive materials.
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that → require → materials
This indie thriller's politics are dead obvious, but the film extracts maximum tension by exploring all the ways such a brazen act of environmentalism could go wrong.
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act → extract → environmentalism
Money quote: "If we want to survive, we must damage and dismantle CO2-emitting devices, demolish them, burn them, blow them up.
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we → want → them
Let those who profit from mass death know their properties will be trashed."
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properties → let → death
