2025 Ended the Most Tired Cinematic Argument Ever (And It Made Some People Really Mad)
Whenever someone in a creative field expresses a political sentiment, hordes of people tend to insist that the person holding that opinion shut up and stick to what they “know,” whether it’s music, film, or sports (the latter isn’t necessarily a creative activity, but you get what I mean). This tends to go hand in hand with the fact that some insist that art is not political, but this is not true; even William Shakespeare trafficked in statecraft by writing stories that looked favorably on Tudor ancestors like Henry V and unfavorably on that dynasty’s fallen enemies like Richard III. Stating that art and politics are not compatible is a hackneyed argument, and I think a slate of releases in 2025 may have finally put that particular view to rest.
It’s no secret that 2025 has been a particularly divisive year when it comes to politics – not just in the United States, but in the world as a whole. Even though several of the films I’m going to discuss here were, to be fair, written long before we all experienced one of the most divisive political eras the world has ever seen, the fact is that some of them were prescient, some of them pointed, and all of them were deeply political and not at all shy about doing so. This alone is refreshing; Like it or not, politics is part of the human experience. More and more often, political games affect people’s personal outcomes, whether they have to do with the cost of living or their ability to marry the person they love. Films like “One Battle After Another,” “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” and “Sinners,” to name a few, directly tackle this exact conundrum. And honestly? The results are quite spectacular.
Cinema produced in the United States in 2025 was overtly political – and they weren’t subtle about it either
When I saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s bravura masterpiece “One Battle After Another” in the theater, I was shocked beyond belief that the film showed immigrant children locked in cages in detention centers. I had a similar feeling during Bong Joon Ho’s underrated follow-up to “Parasite,” “Mickey 17,” watching Mark Ruffalo’s power-hungry, bombastic future dictator Kenneth Marshall lord over his cronies. During Ryan Coogler’s first post-Marvel original project, “Sinners,” when the vampire Remmick (Jack O’Connell) matter-of-factly informs the black musicians and twins Smoke and Stack Moore (both Michael B. Jordan) that the white people of Mississippi will never accept them and therefore they should choose the vampire life (I’m paraphrasing), I was absolutely blown away.
“The Running Man” and “The Long Walk,” directed by Edgar Wright and Francis Lawrence, respectively, depict horrifying, futuristic worlds in which the government openly and even proudly abuses its poorest citizens, forcing them to engage in deadly competitions in hopes of winning vast sums of money. I knew “Wicked: For Good” would focus on fighting fascism in a magical world, but I was still fascinated by how Jon M. Chu openly embraced this aspect of the Broadway musical, and imagine my surprise when “Zootopia 2,” the hit sequel to childrentook a purely political approach to its own history.
I don’t want any of this to be negative. Quite the contrary. I spent those major moments of the film in disbelief because I almost couldn’t believe that the studios were letting Anderson, Coogler, Joon Ho, Chu, Wright, Lawrence and “Zootopia 2” director Jared Bush and Byron Howard do this on the big screen in 2025. I’m glad they did, though. Art must be relevant. These films are.
Politics and art are permanently intertwined and, ultimately, this connection can create truly transcendent films.
The most interesting thing about the brazen political films of 2025 is that none of them proselytize or stand on a soapbox, telling audiences how they should think about the state of the world (whatever that is, because I suspect many of these films will stand the test of time and be watched and re-watched for years to come). Even blockbusters like “Superman” and “Weapons” address major political issues without addressing them. enough as directly as, say, “One Battle After Another,” a film that is directly about revolutionaries resisting white supremacists in positions of power. But themes from James Gunn’s take on the world-famous superhero and Zach Cregger’s highly praised second feature are also available. debatewhich makes them fascinating in their own right. Talk all you want about what that big machine gun means in “Weapons” or what Jarhanpur represents in “Superman” – it’s just as incredible as the overtly political messages contained in “The Long Walk” and “Sinners.”
I’ve said this before, but I can’t stress this point enough. Almost every great work of art in the world has been made with at least some political consciousness, and some great works are transparent about their connections to actual politics; Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, among others, painted “Guernica” and “The Enigma of Hitler,” which didn’t exactly mince words about their subject matter. Movies should be no different, and in 2025 – when many of the world’s major nations are completely divided – film should depict our current moment, especially when that moment may seem… overwhelming.
Politics and art will always be linked, and as this year showed us in film, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
