Tied in The Book of Life, between La Muerte, ruler over the Land of the Remembered who represents the positive side of the afterlife, and the Candlemaker.
Robin Hood: Much like most adaptations, King Richard is the motivation behind the heroes fighting Prince John, and his absence is what allows everything to fall apart.
The Little Mermaid: King Triton is the (mostly) benevolent ruler of the seas and the one Ursula ultimately targets in her quest for power.
Aladdin: The Sultan is the ruler of Agrabah, his removal is what Jafar seeks to achieve for most of the movie, and a single sentence from him solves one of the movie's main conflicts.
The Lion King has Mufasa, ruler of Pride Rock, whose death is what prompts everything to go to badly. Post-climax, at the end of the film Simba takes on his role.
Toy Story: Woody is the one all the toys look up to and they rely on his leadership. Andy serves as the Bigger Good, as the toys' relatively good lives are because of him and the conflict in the first two films is returning to him, with the conflict in the third being that they truly can't rely on him anymore.
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A Bug's Life: The Queen leads the ants and tries to safeguard them from Hopper, a role then taken up by Atta.
Cars: Doc Hudson, Finn McMissile in Cars 2note though maybe it's actually Lightning Mc Queen in this case, at least in Mater's eyes and Cars 3 has Doc in a posthumous sense, Smokey in a living sense and then Lightning Mc Queen by the end of the movie.
Ratatouille: Chef Auguste Gusteau (in a posthumous fashion), being the founder of the restaurant and the motivation for the main character.
WALL•E: Captain McCrea takes up this role once he starts defying AUTO.
Brave: Queen Elinor; you'd think it'd be King Fergus, but the movie is very keen on showing that Elinor is the real boss.
Monsters University: Dean Hardscrabble, although it takes most of the movie for Mike and Sully to realise it.
Megamind: Metroman is the great hero of Metro City whose absence sets the plot in motion. Towards the end, Megamind fills the role.
Rise of the Guardians: The Man in the Moon is treated as the leader of the Guardians and the source of their power, but it isn't clear how much, if any, of a role it has.
Sausage Party has Firewater and Gum. The former is the main food who knows the truth, and the latter gives Barry the information needed to kill the "gods" and find a way back to the supermarket. Gum even joins Barry and Frank's revolution against the "gods".
The White Queen from the Disney and Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland (2010) (There are hints, however, that the character's true nature may actually be just as evil - if not more so - as her sister the Red Queen, and keeping this true nature in check is a constant stuggle for her.)
In Casablanca, Victor Laszlo. Those Wacky Nazis are willing to do just about anything, even violating Vichy "neutrality" (thus risking drawing the U.S. into the war) and letting known anti-fascist fighter Rick and Laszlo's "companion" Ilsa escape to America, if it means they can stop Laszlo.
Godzilla (2014): In a very loose way, Godzilla is seen as this by Dr. Serizawa, who notes that the creature is humanity's best chance at survival and the only thing that can stop the MUTOs.
Mars Attacks!: President Dale. The leader of the US army and one of the humans who gets the most focus in the film.
Morpheus from the The Matrix, shifting quite quickly to Neo after he reaches The One status.
Raiden from Mortal Kombat: The Movie and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, which most people agreed was a great use of Pragmatic Adaptation. The character in the games was not quite top-tier despite being a Physical God. (And in some non-canonical video game endings involving him, he is depicted as being evil and/or blindly destructive.)
Marshall Stacker Pentecost in Pacific Rim leads the Shatterdome and is the moral heart of the heroes; he refers to himself as a "fixed point" around which everyone else can focus.
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda in the classic trilogy are opposed both thematically and in characterisation to Darth Vader and The Emperor respectively, the last remnants of the Jedi Order, and are both The Mentor to Luke.
Yoda and Mace Windu in the prequel trilogy, being the leaders of the still extant Jedi Council. In Episode 1 Chancellor Valorum tries for this, but is quickly deposed of by pre-Emperor Palpatine.
Palpatine exploits this by acting as a Big Good for both the Republic and (secretly) the Separatist Alliance to prolong the Clone Wars as long as possible and acquire ever greater power.
The Rebels have Mon Mothma leading their political side, and Admiral Ackbar leading their military side.
The Force Awakens has General Leia Organa serving as the leader of the heroic Resistance.
In Suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst fills this role. She is in hiding at the time the plot takes place, and is only seen giving a Rousing Speech, after which she goes into hiding again. When some suffragettes, the protagonist Maud among them, blow up a manor house (while no one is at home, obviously, they're nonviolent), she takes the blame (or credit) for that and goes to prison. The secret service, who had been trying to convince Maud that the suffragettes consider her expendable and will do nothing to keep her out of trouble, are not happy about this.
John Connor in the Terminator films is fated to be one of these, and in Terminator Salvation he consequently is. However as of the new timeline established in Terminator: Dark Fatethe one in which John is murdered as a teenager by a T-800 named Carl while on vacation with his mother sometime after Judgment Day Dani Ramos will become this.
Odin is portrayed this way in the 2011 Thor film. Most of the film is about Thor proving himself worthy to succeed him as king of Asgard.
King Leonidas in 300 leads the eponymous group of Spartans against the Persian army, and his legacy is what spurs on the Spartans in the current day (the movie being told In Medias Res by an Unreliable Narrator).
In the Transformers Film Series, Optimus Prime takes on this role as leader of the Autobots. He is defined as a Martial Pacifist, a particularly brutal one fighting the Decepticons because otherwise innocents will die. But many Autobots are borderline Blood Knights themselves, which requires his leadership to keep them pointed at the right enemy. In Transformers: Age of Extinction, the surviving Autobots after The Purge are ecstatic once he comes out of hiding, with Crosshairs calling him "Leader of the free galaxy." Later in the film, him and Drift were cynical of Optimus' freeing the Dinobots to combat Galvatron's armies, only to watch Optimus take charge.
Crosshairs: Ugh, you just want to die for the guy. That's leadership... or brainwashing. Drift: No, that's Optimus Prime.
TRON and Kevin Flynn in TRON split the duties. Tron is the legendary warrior and rallying point for Programs in the fight against Master Control in the first film. In TRON: Uprising, he's once again the rebellion's rallying point, with Beck taking on the symbol to fight Tesler, since Tron's too badly injured to fight himself. And in the Alternate Continuity of Tron 2.0, he's the focus of a King in the Mountain myth that states he'll return to defend the Programs in their darkest hour. note Nothing comes of it in the game itself, though the protagonist of 2.0 could, from a certain point of view, be considered Tron's little brother. The Killer App sequel, however, plays it straight with Tron being brought out of stasis to fight a viral attack Flynn is the Big Good (or Bigger Good) in the TRON: Legacy canon, as he's essentially the system's local deity, (making this an Exaggerated Trope) overthrown and exiled by his own avatar on the digital side of the screen while his analog-world friends fight to keep the ideals he stood for going at Encom. Of course, both have been subjected to a lot of Alternate Character Interpretation
In Valkyrie this role is filled by Ludwig Beck, the leader of the German resistance. Even when Stauffenberg assumes control of field operations, he still acknowledges Beck as his superior and the new head of state of liberated Germany.
X-Men: The Last Stand: Professor X is this most of the time, but it's deconstructed to some degree in this movie. He's called out about putting up mental blocks in Jean Grey's mind in-order to suppress the split persona that called itself the Phoenix. Needlessly to say, Xavier had more or less I Did What I Had to Do in-order to suppress the Phoenix.
X-Men: First Class: Charles Xavier is the leader of the heroic team that eventually defeats the Big Bad. He brought them together, trained them and inspired them to be valiant when faced with great peril.
X-Men: Days of Future Past: The elderly Professor X and Magneto share the leadership role among the remaining X-Men and the Free Mutants. Wolverine's mission is to guide Xavier's younger self towards the process of growing into this by accepting both his powers and his duty to his fellow mutants.
X-Men: Apocalypse: Professor X; the good vs. evil conflict chiefly revolves around him and the Big Bad En Sabah Nur, who are each other's Foil, and the latter is also the former's Evil Counterpart and Shadow Archetype. Charles, despite being relatively feeble as an individual mutant compared to his god-like foe, is the better leader because he's the epitome of Machiavelli Was Wrong, and that's why the X-Men triumph whereas the Four Horsemen crumble as a team.
Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road. She's opposite to Immortan Joe's Big Bad, with her main objective being the liberation of The Wives. Angharad counts as well, as she inspired the wives to escape and caused the movie's events. George Miller has said she's Immortan Joe's true ideological opponent.
