Movies based on self-referential conceps

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I'm talking about movies that are kind of self-conscious, where the plot itself is based on its own concept. To explain what I mean:

There are lots of movies with talking animals, but that's just an ingredient of the movie. Like Chicken Little for instance. But in Zootopia, the talking animals is the plot itself; different species have not always co-existed peacefully, predators are still predators somewhere under the surface. The movie says; "yes, cats eat mice in the real world, that's how it use to be in this world as well, and many are afraid it will turn that way again".

It's the same with The Incredibles. It was not just a superhero movie, it was a movie that tried to look at superheroes as a phenomena, where being as superhero was suddenly illegal. Like Marvel's Civil War, or Alan Moore's Watchmen, where he placed superheroes in a more realistic world.

Or the Mickey Mouse short Get a Horse!. "Yes, cartoons used to be drawn by hand and in black and white. Today it can be done in colors and in 3D on computers. Let's use that as a plot in our short."

In Monsters, Inc. it is not really about monsters under your bed or inside your closet, but why they are there, what kind of business they have and why adults never see them when they open their children's closet doors.

And to some degree in A Bug's Life, or at least its ending. "Hey, were are actually just playing established roles here. We as the suppressed ones, and you as the suppressors. If we go out of our roles, you will be helpless. Hurray, we won."

If a sequel, or prequel, to Cars or Toy Story did something like that, we would get a movie where it is explained why cars are sentient and there are no humans around. Or how and why toys can be alive, where they get the energy from to be able to move, why they feel the need to be played with and so on. And in my opinion, we don't really need those movies.

Some old clichés in this regard is movies where the characters says; "Wait a minute. We are actually inside a movie/script/book/dream/video game".

Of course movies based on these concepts can still be entertaining, but I must confess I prefer movies that focus on a specific topic without using this as a fundament.