some adaptations are more equal than others | ANIMAL FARM

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to honor the memory of none other than George Orwell. 76 years after his death, his eerie and haunting novels are still so impactful that his name is synonymous with the word dystopian. I hope to one day live in a world where his work is no longer relevant, but I fear we are not there yet. In fact, some days it feels like his work has never been more relevant, which is maybe part of why a movie adaptation of one of his most famous books, Animal Farm, just hit theaters. This poignant and impactful film, dare I say cinema, really captures that blend of existential dread and satire that makes the original book so great. And it heartens me to know that we have artists that can guide us through such trying times and put such impactful work on screen.

[00:00:51]>> Blaster house.

[00:00:55]>> It's a slaughter house. Did we plan this? No, this was not part of the plan, >> right? So, that was a joke, which is probably a much more accurate word to describe this movie. I am so sorry for the monstrosity that I'm about to introduce you guys to, but I had to suffer. So, now so do you. But before we fully dive in, I have a quick request.

[00:01:13]I'm about to hit 50,000 subscribers, which is really crazy. Thank you guys so much for subscribing. So, I want to do some kind of bonus video for 50K. While I was brainstorming ideas, I was just thinking if it's your guys' bonus video, then you should probably come up with the idea. So, I've linked a suggestion box if you want to go submit any ideas for a potential 50K subscriber special.

[00:01:33]You will have to sign in, but it's not collecting emails. I was just trying to stop people from spamming the form, but if you have multiple ideas, feel free to just include them in one submission of the form. Thank you. All right, enough preamble. I have to tell you guys about the worst movie that I have ever seen.

[00:01:47]Wait, what just ran by here just now?

[00:01:49]Was that a cliffhanger? That's right. We actually can't talk about the movie yet because ultimately this is a book channel. So when I cover bookto movie adaptations, I usually like to talk about the book and then the movie. But if all you care about is the new movie, there are timestamps. Animal Farm by George Orwell. Normally when I hold up books in videos, I'll say something like Dar She Blows, but I can't do that with this one cuz she's real skinny. Animal Farm's only 100 pages, but boy does it put those pages to work. Should we set her up? Clean it up against the Twilight House. I feel like Edward would not like this book, but I can't exactly put into words why. Animal Farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the years afterwards as Stalin slowly took more and more power in Russia. Allegory is just a fancy word for a big metaphor where the character is the metaphor or the event is the metaphor. And in the whole book, it's a metaphor to something. You see what I'm saying? So, in Animal Farm, every character represents a real person or group of people. and he uses this farm to tell the story of the Russian Revolution and Stalin's rise to power. So, let's walk through the plot. It starts with the animals gathering to hear a speech from Old Major, who's supposed to be Karl Marx. He gives them this speech about how unethical it is that the animals do all the work on the farm, but it's the farmer that reaps all the benefits. Mr. Jones, the farmer, is enriched off of the animals back, and the animals live in horrible conditions despite their labor being why the farm is profitable.

[00:03:09]and he tells them his dream of a future farm where the animals communally own the farm and all work together to provide for each other. He also teaches them a revolutionary song called Beasts of England. Then Old Major dies, but his ideas live on and the animals spend time meeting over the next few months to really hone Old Major's speech into seven core commandments that are rules that they would all live by if they ever succeeded in such a revolution. And they call this animalism. And then they achieve their goals almost on accident.

[00:03:39]Mr. Jones forgets to feed them one night, so they break into the greenhouse to eat. And when the humans discover them there, they try to drive them out with whips. And the animals fight back and instead drive the humans all the way off the farm. And then they're all kind of looking at each other like, "Wait a minute, guys. We just did it. It's our farm now. That's crazy." And in the beginning, food is plentiful and all the animals are doing really well and they're living way better than they ever lived with Mr. Jones. and they have the appearance of having a very communal nature in the way they run the farm, but really when they all meet, it's mostly the pigs suggesting resolutions and arguing over them. And specifically, there are two pigs that are the most vocal, Snowball and Napoleon. And the reason we're given for this is because the pigs are the cleverest of the animals. Snowball starts to teach the other animals how to read and write, while Napoleon takes a litter of puppies away to raise them away from the farm.

[00:04:28]Mr. Jones tries to take back the farm, but he's not successful. And Snowball really is a hero in the battle. And then Snowball tries to convince the animals that it would be a great idea if they built a windmill. He says, "With a windmill, we'd be able to automate so much of what we do, and then everybody could have a 3-day work week and electricity in our stalls, and we could live such a luxurious lifestyle." But Napoleon is very against this idea, and he really fights against it. And at one point while he and Snowball are debating it, he calls out the puppies which are now much larger dogs and they spook Snowball off the farm. And without Snowball, there's not really anybody to question Napoleon. But why would they?

[00:05:05]He believes in animalism just like anybody else, right? Surely there's not something more nefarious going on here.

[00:05:11]Napoleon then basically immediately goes, "The windmill is actually a great idea. In fact, it was my idea and Snowball stole it. So we actually are going to build the windmill, but not because Snowball told us to. No, no, no.

[00:05:22]Cuz he's evil." And what happens then is a cycle of Napoleon slowly changing the structure of how things work on the farm and using Squealer, who's a very convincing speaker, to convince all the other animals, either that it's completely fine and there's nothing to worry about, or that they're not actually changing the structure at all.

[00:05:41]It was like this the whole time. You just aren't remembering correctly. And starts to blame literally every problem that the farm has on Snowball. He claims that he's lying in weight at one of the neighboring farms and that he's sabotaging them. He also claims that he has a bunch of spies on the inside and over a period of time certain animals confess to working with Snowball in secret and then they're publicly executed by Napoleon's dogs. And all these confessions seem completely legitimate and they don't seem coerced at all. After a time, the pigs start breaking some of the core commandments of animalism. But anytime the animals push back, they're like, "No, we're not breaking the rules. What are you talking about?" And the animals will go double check where the rules are painted on the side of the barn and they'll realize that they aren't remembering the rule correctly and the pigs totally aren't breaking it. For example, the rule that they remember as no animal will sleep in a bed was actually no animal will sleep in a bed with sheets. They're like, "Oh, okay. I guess we said with sheets, I guess the pigs can sleep in a bed, whatever." And it's pretty obvious, but later confirmed that the pigs are changing these commandments by painting extra words onto the end to make sure that the animals never realize that they're breaking the original commandments. Napoleon also bans the beast of England song by saying that the utopia is realized. Don't we all live on the perfect farm that was described, you don't need to sing that revolutionary song anymore? Despite the animals feeling like they're just as hungry as they were when Mr. Jones ran the farm.

[00:07:06]And in the background of all of this is this rising fear of the humans coming back and retaking the farm from the animals. And at one point the windmill does collapse on its own and so they have to build it back up again. I forgot to mention that. Sorry. But then the fear of the humans coming back is realized and the humans show up and there's a really gruesome battle that happens and some of the animals are killed or wounded and the humans manage to blow up the windmill. But they do manage to drive the humans back. So the animals still have control of Animal Farm, but they don't have their windmill and multiple of them are killed or wounded, including Boxer, a horse who's the hardest working animal on the farm.

[00:07:39]And so despite his injuries, he continues to push through and attempts to work because he's nearing the animal retirement age. So he figures he might as well just work through his last little bit and then he'll retire and live out the rest of his life prancing in a prairie. But he's not actually able to work for that much longer and he ends up collapsing. So a van shows up to take him to the hospital. But after he's loaded in, the animals read the side and realize that it actually says glue factory. I actually don't remember if it was a van or a cart. Now that I think about it, it was written in the ' 50s. I think it was a van. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Some sort of vehicle shows up operated by humans that says [ __ ] Glue Factory on the side. And the pigs claim this is a nefarious rumor and of course can be explained by the fact that the animal hospital recently bought a vehicle from a [ __ ] And so it still says that on the side, but we promise he wasn't being taken to the glue factory.

[00:08:31]No, no, no. He was taken to the hospital. He did die there, though.

[00:08:35]Don't think about that too hard. Thanks.

[00:08:38]And we, the reader, find out that the pigs used the money that they got for Boxer to buy whiskey. And then many years pass, and most of the animals who were a part of the revolution have since passed away. All of the commandments have been changed at this point, including the core one, which is all animals are created equal. That one's been changed to all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. And their overarching summary of it, which was four legs good, two legs bad, ends up getting changed to four legs good, two legs better. And at this point in time, the pigs walk on hind legs, they sleep in beds in the farmhouse, they wear clothes, they drink alcohol, and Napoleon hosts a dinner party that involves inviting over the humans that run the neighboring farms.

[00:09:17]And the humans give this speech about how afraid they were of animal farm right at first because they thought it actually was going to create a utopia where all the animals were equal and then the animals on their farms might rise up and really push for this. But the humans acknowledge that Napoleon is running the farm in a way where the animal farm animals are treated just as bad if not worse than the animals are treated on the other farms. And this is when Napoleon announces that he is changing the name Animal Farm back to Manor Farm. And then they start to play a card game together, but get into an argument when they realize everybody's cheating at the card game. And the animals are watching through the farmhouse window as the humans and the pigs argue. And they realize that they can't tell who's who. They've become indistinguishable from each other. And that's Animal Farm. Cute little cozy story. Really leaves you with a warm and fuzzy feeling. So that's the plot. But what does it all mean? What was the point? If you follow me on Instagram or Tik Tok, then you might have seen that this movie made me so angry that I did post a little bit of a pre- rant. I said in passing that this book is an allegory for the Russian Revolution and moved on and I got a very wide range of comments from people about what they think Animal Farm is about and there were some very spirited debates happening. So I want to put a quick disclaimer on this. I fully believe in the principles of death of the author. So I am in no way saying that people reading this book and interpreting it and taking different things away from it is invalid. But I do think the question of what did Orwell intend to be the message of Animal Farm?

[00:10:45]What was his goal in writing it to be a really interesting conversation? And so I'd like to unpack that a little bit if that's okay with you. Actually, you don't have a choice. This is my YouTube video. That's where we're going. But that does mean that we have to tread into very dangerous waters because we have to talk about politics. There's no way to talk about this book without talking about politics cuz that was kind of horrible's whole shtick. That's pretty much all he wrote about.

[00:11:09]Occasionally he would throw a random curveball in such as an essay he once wrote about the perfect way to make a cup of tea. He was British after all, but those really were curveballs and otherwise he pretty much exclusively wrote about politics. But that does mean we don't really have to guess at what his political opinions were because he did tell the world in pretty explicit terms. He was a socialist. And if you're curious about a little bit more of what he believed on that front, there's this essay called Can Socialists Be Happy?

[00:11:35]that he wrote that's about what socialism means to him and why he's a socialist. But he actually summarizes it better in these throwaway lines in two other things that he wrote. One of them is an essay on Arthur Kesler where he says, "Perhaps some degree of suffering is inerlicable from human life. Perhaps the choice before man is always a choice of evils. Perhaps even the aim of socialism is not to make the world perfect but to make it better." And this is from the road to Wigan Pier. Indeed, from one point of view, socialism is such elementary common sense that I am sometimes amazed that it has not established itself already. The world is a raft sailing through space with potentially plenty of provisions for everybody. The idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system. But all of that to say that that's generally what Orwell believed politically at a very high level, right?

[00:12:29]But what about Animal Farm, right? What was his point with writing Animal Farm specifically? I think part of the reason why people are having so much trouble coming to a consensus as to what Orwell's goal was in writing Animal Farm is that I think there's a lot of people who are removing it from the historical context in which it was written, which is a really pretentious way of saying they're not thinking about what was going on in the world at the time. I can't speak for other countries, but I know in America we learn history in chunks. You have these units that focus on historical events kind of altogether.

[00:12:58]So you'll do the unit on World War II and you'll learn that Germany invaded Russia until Russia entered the fighting on the side of the allies. And as a result, when the war ended, Russia and all the Allied countries were allies for a brief duration of time, but that it was very short-lived. And that's what moves us into our next unit, which is the Red Scare and the Korean War. Russia and England were only allied for about 2 or 3 years after World War II ended.

[00:13:23]What we remember as a blip in history that is just described as a short-lived period of time was 2 or 3 years in real life. And what's fascinating about Animal Farm is that it was published in 1945, which is the year that World War II ended, which means it would have fallen into the 2 or 3ear span that Russia and England were allies. To understand why this matters, we have to look at an essay called The Freedom of the Press, which was a proposed preface to Animal Farm that was not published with the book and ended up getting published in the Times Literary Supplement on September 15th, 1972. So, way after the book came out. At the beginning, Orwell discloses that he came up with the idea around 1937 and was done with the book by 1943 and had difficulty getting it published and eventually got it published in 1945. his explanation as to why he had so much difficulty publishing it is because of the attitude towards Russia at the time in England. He says that while anti-Russian sentiment wasn't actively being suppressed by the military, it was just generally frowned upon because Russia was considered an ally and that there actually was a publisher that accepted it but then rescended their offer after speaking with the British government where the Ministry of Information strongly suggested that publishing this book might be a bad idea because it might anger their ally Russia. Now, he goes on to say later in the preface that he doesn't believe that there's active suppression going on from the government, but again, he intended for this to be published with the book.

[00:14:52]So, I'm not sure if he was just saying that to keep himself off the chopping block. I don't know. But the quote that he includes from the letter from the publisher informing him that they were no longer going to be publishing Animal Farm, he includes in the preface, it's this big chunk, so I'm not going to highlight it cuz I'm having difficulty doing that on my trackpad. I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to Animal Farm. I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think. I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill advised to publish at the present time.

[00:15:24]If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large, then publication would be all right. But the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators that it can only apply to Russia to the exclusion of other dictatorships.

[00:15:40]Another thing, it would be less offensive if the predominant cast in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling cast will no doubt give offense to many people and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.

[00:15:52]If you read a lot of his writing, but specifically if you go and read this proposed preface, it becomes very clear that potentially what frustrated Orwell the most about this era in time is that it wasn't just the government that really didn't want anti-Russia sentiment published, but that the broader left-wing thought leaders, if you will, in England also didn't want anti-Russia stuff published because Russia was the only communist government at the time and they didn't want to make the socialist movement look bad. And before any of you, like I can sense me saying those two words close to each other and people just like breaking out their keyboards to frantically type that they're not the same thing. Do not tie them together. I'm going to break it down how I understand it, but understand I'm not a political science person. It's the best I understand it. Right?

[00:16:40]Socialism is an umbrella that just means communal ownership of the means of production instead of private ownership.

[00:16:46]And that within that there are all of these different denominations, if you will, that you can be of different ways that these ideals can be implemented. So you can be a democratic socialist or you could be a social democrat and those are not the same thing. Oh my god, do not get those words flipped around. Or you could be a communist, etc. That all of these are under the umbrella that is socialism. So communism is socialism, but socialism isn't only communism.

[00:17:09]Again, that's how I understand it, but I could be wrong about that. And I'm sure that there's a lot of people who are going to think I'm wrong cuz they just have their own personal definition and they're going to comment and tell me anyway. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because if you are American and you learned this book in middle school, then what you were probably taught is that this is the most anti-communist book of all time. The point of it is that communism is bad and leads to totalitarianism. And that was Orwell's core belief. And he really dedicated his life to teaching the world that. And no, no, no, no, no. Don't read 1984. In fact, we're not going to allow access to 1984 in a lot of schools. and we're going to put Animal Farm into the curriculum. It was communism he hated. I promise. Okay, enough. Meredith, you've been clicking around on Orwell's essays and reading quotes forever now. What do you think his point with Animal Farm is?

[00:17:54]I regret to inform you that I'm going to borrow more of his words to describe it.

[00:17:58]This is how he was describing Darkness at Noon by Kesler in his essay on Kesler. Clearly, it is a political book founded on history and offering an interpretation of disputed events. Haha, I tricked you into watching so much YouTube video to just get back around to what I originally said. This book is about Stalin. It's about the Russian Revolution and Stalin's rise to power. I believe that his purpose in writing this book was to say, "Hey guys, we should not be allies with Russia." I think he started it at a time when the left in England was very afraid to speak out against Stalin because they didn't want to make the overarching socialist movement look bad, but continued to be motivated to work on it by Russia joining World War II on the side of the Allies and becoming an ally after the war. And I think his purpose with it is to say, "Hey guys, two things can be true at once. Socialism can be a great thing for us to be moving towards and Stalin can be evil and we all need to stop pretending like he isn't." And that's what I mean about people removing it from its historical context. Like in the modern day, there's no reason for that to be the message of any book. We know Stalin was evil. What do you mean people needed convincing on that? And Russia being allies with England was so short-lived. I mean, it only lasted 2 or 3 years. Well, yeah, but for the people living at the time, that was 2 or 3 years. If two countries became allied now and then weren't allies anymore in 2029, would it be fair for people 80 years from now to be like, why were people so upset that they became their allies? Like, no, we can't see the future. How are we going to know that it's going to fall apart in 2029? As he was working on the book, people were afraid to speak out against Stalin for fear of making socialism look bad. And when he published the book, England and Russia were allies. And if you read enough of his writing, you will find him bringing this up so much. He hated that so many people did not want to speak out against Stalin. And he was screaming from the rooftops that that man was despicable, that the conditions the Russian people were living in were horrendous, and that everybody needed to stop burying their head in the sand and pretending like that wasn't happening.

[00:19:58]And I genuinely think that was his sole motive. If we return back to the Freedom of the Press essay and specifically go to the quote from the publisher, this publisher says, "The fable does follow as I see now. so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators that it can apply only to Russia to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. So yes, these aren't Orwell's words. He was quoting somebody else. But this is what somebody else said about Animal Farm and he included it in this preface where his main point was, "Nobody wanted this published because I'm criticizing Stalin." He was criticizing Stalin. It really is that simple. So that begs the question, how did he feel about communism specifically? And is the book anti-communist?

[00:20:43]Well, I fear we must go to yet another of his essays called Notes on Nationalism. Great read. You should all read it. Where he defines the word communist. A communist for my purpose here is one who looks upon the USSR as his fatherland and feels it his duty to justify Russian policy and advance Russian interests at all costs. So yes, he was writing about nationalism here.

[00:21:04]So I'm not 100% certain that this is his broad definition of communism at large.

[00:21:10]But right above it he says communism using this word in a very loose sense to include not merely communist party members but fellow travelers and Russophiles generally. So above it he says I'm using this term loosely to mean people who are members of the communist party and also people who are really sympathetic to the Russian cause. And if you read a lot of his essays then you will find that he uses the word communist and the word Russian interchangeably. specifically Russian sympathizer is maybe a better way to put it, right? He uses those terms interchangeably. So, is the book anti-communist? By this definition of the word communist, I would say yes.

[00:21:46]That's not really our modern definition of the word communism, though. As far as the modern definition of communism, I think this book does make a point about it, but I think that point might surprise you. Last quote from any of his essays, I promise, and then I'm done.

[00:21:59]And I have one thing to read you from the book and then I promise I'm going to start ranting about the movie. But at some point when talking about Kesler during the section where he's talking about it being a political book, he says, "If one writes about the Moscow trials, one must answer the question, why did the accused confess? And which answer one makes is a political decision." Kesler answers in effect because these people had been rotted by the revolution which they served. And in doing so, he comes near to claiming that revolutions are of their nature bad. If we look at Animal Farm through the same lens, what is the allegory to communism?

[00:22:30]It's animalism. How does animalism get formed? Well, there's a speech given by this pig named Old Major that's really, really long. Old Major is Karl Marx and the speech is the Communist Manifesto.

[00:22:40]This gets boiled down into the seven commandments of animalism. And one of these core commandments is all animals are created equal. And over the course of the book, we see how Napoleon, who is supposed to be Stalin, Snowball is Trosky, by the way, I don't know if I ever said that, goes on to forsake those commandments and then change them so that the animals don't realize he's changing them. And I had to grab our prop off the shelf cuz I have to read you a line from the scene where the humans and the pigs are all in the farmhouse together. This is Napoleon speaking to the humans after they've basically been like, "Man, we were kind of afraid of this whole animal farm thing, but you've actually turned out to be a pretty cool neighbor." Like all of Napoleon's speeches, it was short and to the point. He too, he said, was happy that the period of misunderstanding was at an end. For a long time, there had been rumors circulated, he had reason to think, by some malignant enemy, that there was something subversive and even revolutionary in the outlook of himself and his colleagues. They had been credited with attempting to stir up a rebellion among the animals on neighboring farms. Nothing could be further from the truth. Their sole wish now and in the past was to live at peace and in normal business relations with their neighbors. This farm, which he had the honor to control, he added, was a cooperative enterprise. The title deeds, which were in his own possession, were owned by the pigs jointly. Here he says, "There's some rumor that we had some like revolutionary ideas, but no, no, no, no, no. That was a rumor. We always intended to take complete control and run the farm the exact same way the humans did." You guys might not agree with me on this, but I think it's safe to conclude given the way that Old Major's speech is framed pretty positively. the original commandments of animalism are changed for Napoleon to take power. And then he says at the end, yeah, everybody thought we were going to do something like really revolutionary and different and treat all the animals as equal, but no way, man. That was never our goal. That his point was that that was never Stalin's goal. But none of that is commentary saying that communism in and of itself is bad. At least the way we understand it now.

[00:24:34]Again, according to his definition of the word communist, which just meant USSR, Stalin, Russian sympathizer, member of the Russian Communist Party, according to that definition of the word, it's very anti-communist. His commentary to me is about Napoleon. It's about Stalin. I don't think that the ideals in this book are framed to be the problem. And in fact, it seems he frames them to be very virtuous goals. Anyway, that's what I took away from it. I'm sure there will be plenty of people out there who disagree with me, but feel free to comment as long as you're nice.

[00:25:02]You guys know I don't mind if you disagree with me as long as you're nice.

[00:25:05]But if you're mean, I'll delete the comment. So that's your incentive to be nice. All of that to say, that's heavy subject matter. I'm sure the movie will capture this tone perfectly, right guys?

[00:25:15]Surely my own YouTube video isn't going to take a hard shift in tone because of how wildly different the movie tone is from the book, right? Yeah. We're going to get a little goofier and sillier now.

[00:25:25]And we're finally going to talk about this stupid ass movie. When the trailer dropped and people realized that Seth Rogan was going to be playing Napoleon aka Stalin and that it was going to be all this slapstick humor, people were like, "Oh no, this is not going to be good." In an interview with Variety, he explains that his inspiration behind how he framed the character Napoleon is the way that the times have changed. So, when the book was originally written, leaders were a lot more like how Napoleon is in the book, where they're very serious and very political. but that these days having a charismatic leader who leans on funny at the same time seemed to work for us. I know that sentence isn't grammatically correct.

[00:26:05]I'm pretty sure this was like a spoken interview that they just made into a transcript, but he's essentially saying that the reason why they wrote Napoleon the way that they did is because our corrupt leaders in the modern day are charismatic and lean on funny and seem to be working for the people or at least that they come across that way to people who are fans of said leaders. So his goal was to teach young children that that doesn't necessarily mean that this leader is going to be a good leader.

[00:26:29]Okay, that's not necessarily a horrible reasoning. So remember that. Hold on to that. Their original concept for this movie was actually infinitely more cursed than what they ended up with if you would believe it. When talking about casting choices, he said, "We spoke to Seth Rogan about 12 years ago when it was still going to be a performance capture liveaction film." performance capture liveaction film. Okay. And then you remember that Andy Circus, the director of this adaptation of Animal Farm, is also an actor and that he was recently in the Planet of the Apes movies where he played a monkey. They put all these dots on his face and put him in a crazy suit that also had dots on it and then they CGIed him into a monkey. This is what performance capture live action means. It means filming the actors and then CGIing them into what you actually want the people to see on screen. So, just so there's no confusion, their original concept for this film was to put Seth Rogan into one of those dot suits and film him and then CGI him into a pig. And you might be thinking, why am I reacting to that like it would be so awful? You can do this for apes because if you look at these faces side by side, you can see the comparison in the facial structure, right? We share a similar ancestor with monkeys and so we have similar face shape to them. So the emotions on a human face would translate well to an ape face and you can see how they CGIed his face to be the monkeykey's face, right? And it would be relatively easy.

[00:28:01]Well, I don't know if you've ever seen a pig before, but that's that's not true for that. We don't share a facial shape with pigs, actually. And so I'm convinced this would have looked absolutely horrifying. And in fact, the pigs wouldn't even have been the worst ones. Okay, can somebody please explain to me how they were going to CGI Woody Harelson into a horse? It's a pretty important plot point that the pigs stand up on hind legs. Were they going to make Seth Rogan film the majority of the movie on all fours? What was the game plan here, Andy? Why did it take experimenting for you to realize this wasn't going to work? And he says it's because in live action, such a story would necessarily have been darker from the outset. Darker, I'm not sure that's the word I'd use. Horrifying to look at.

[00:28:44]I don't know, man. I just think it should have been pretty obvious to them that this wasn't going to work. But as hard as it is for me to do so, I must put that aside and stop thinking about it and focus on what they actually ended up with, which is an animated movie.

[00:28:56]They had decided to tell this story from the perspective of a piglet named Lucky, who Napoleon is trying to take under his wing and turn into a little bit of a protege and have him help Napoleon form this pig upper class on this farm. And I'm going to say something kind of controversial here. I do actually think that there is a world in which the slapstick humor side of things combined with this telling the story from the perspective of a piglet that Napoleon is trying to manipulate. Like I there's a world in which this could have worked.

[00:29:28]Hear me out. Okay. At points in the movie feels like they were trying to do this, but it did not really land at all for reasons that I'll explain in a bit.

[00:29:37]But if what they were going for is that Napoleon is kind of this goofy, silly, funny guy and Lucky thinks he's funny and looks up to him and really wants to be like him and they go around and they do fun things together all the time and he's Napoleon. He's just like a goofy silly guy, you know? And then he finds out that Napoleon is the reason for all of the animals suffering. Like I actually think that could have been really good. And in that version of this movie, having those slapstick pieces at the beginning would have fit better. And I think Seth Rogan would have been a good choice for Napoleon in that instance. And there are moments in it where you can kind of see that that seemed to be what they were going for.

[00:30:13]But here's the problem. Andy Circus says repeatedly in that interview that they did not want to patronize children and that a lot of children's media really patronizes children, yada yada yada. In my opinion, they did do that. They heavily patronized the audience and it was this movie's biggest failing and it's why it did not work at all. I think that they were afraid to risk the audience not getting the message and walking away from it thinking Napoleon was funny or being sympathetic to him in any way. So, the kid stand-in character, Lucky, never really trusts Napoleon. And Lucky never even really finds his slapstick bits funny. So, why should I?

[00:30:53]And every single time that the slapstick came into play, it was usually because something really dark was happening, Napoleon was doing something that was making Lucky uncomfortable. And when Lucky expressed this, Napoleon was kind of like elbow him and be like, "Ah, it's me, Napoleon. I'm a goofy, silly guy. I just I'm a pig that farts a lot. How could I be evil? How could I have ill intentions?" Right? But again, Lucky is never convinced by this. He doesn't think Napoleon's funny. He doesn't look up to him. He doesn't find him to be charismatic in any way. And these moments never really convince Lucky.

[00:31:22]Like, he goes along with what Napoleon's saying, but he's clearly always very uncomfortable with it. And that's its own message, right? If listen to your gut, if you're uncomfortable with something, then there might be a reason why that feeling is there. But then these slapstick moments feel so out of place and so tonally off because the general tone of the movie is really, really dark, but then there will randomly be these slapstick bits that just don't work at all and don't fit.

[00:31:47]They're not funny. So again, I think it could have worked, but I think they had to execute it way differently for that to be the case. And they did not do that. And in the version of the movie they ended up with, people are 100% correct at the way those slapstick bits come across. If what they were going for was to generate the same existential dread that the original book did by butchering the source material in a way that's just very of the times right now and leaves you with an icky feeling in your stomach because why on earth were they taking this tonal approach to such a serious story? Then they nailed it.

[00:32:20]And actually, it took me so long to actually film down and organize my thoughts and make this video that Andy Circus has responded to the criticism at this point. And what he said is Orwell would love this because he was really for discussion and discourse and conversation. And so the fact that everybody's like discussing this movie, like that's what he would have wanted.

[00:32:42]Yes, I'm sure he would have wanted his Stalin standing character to stick his butt directly into the camera and fart.

[00:32:48]I'm 100% certain he would have wanted the cows slapping multiple animals in the face with their utters in the beginning. What was that about? You're right. He'd have loved this. I mean, I know he has to give a PR answer. He can't just come out and be like, "Yeah, you guys are right. The movie was terrible. Sorry." But still, I just thought that was so funny. But anyway, let me give a very brief overview of the plot and then we'll dive into all of the other problems with it. This version hammers out essentially the first 50 pages of the book plot that I described.

[00:33:16]in the first 10 or 20 minutes of the movie. Like, the pacing is crazy. These events are just slapping you in the face so fast. If I hadn't freshly read the book going in, I think I would have been so confused as to why a lot of these things are happening. Essentially, the whole beginning is condensed into one big scene where the animals are being loaded onto a slaughterhouse truck because the farm is being foreclosed upon, but they think they're going to the laughter house because the S is covered by the open door. And when the door closes a little bit and they realize they're actually going to the slaughter house, they all freak out and Snowball gives them this speech. She's also a female pig in the movie, but she gives them the speech that old Major gives about this vision of this future farm where all the animals work together and communally own it and they get all the benefits from it, not Mr. Jones. And so they push back and chase the humans off the farm the same way that happens in the book. My issue with this is not that they condensed it a lot for the movie and got rid of Old Major. I don't care about any of that actually because despite how in-depth I went about thinking that Orwell's original intention was specifically to comment on Stalin in Russia, I actually don't really care about the removal of this from the Russian Revolution allegory because I think there's a lot in there about totalitarianism that can be side takeaways that can be very good. And I think that an adaptation in the modern day would be a lot more valuable focusing on that stuff than sticking so traditionally to the Russian Revolution allegory. So, it doesn't bother me that they got rid of Old Major, and it doesn't bother me that they condensed it. That's all just book to movie adaptation stuff. My issue with this is that it doesn't make any sense. Let me get this straight. The animals are being loaded onto the slaughterhouse truck because the farm is being foreclosed upon, but Snowball gives a speech about how evil it is that Mr. Jones should be enriched off of their hard work.

[00:35:00]Enriched. The farm was being foreclosed upon. And I know that canonically Mr. Jones is an alcoholic and he's not running the farm very well. But that was the whole point. The whole point was that he is still benefiting from the profits off the farm, but he is not taking care of the animals and they are living in miserable conditions as a result. So they are working very very hard to enrich him and he is benefiting from that, but he is not taking care of them and they are not benefiting from their own hard work. That is what inspires old major speech in the first place. So having the farm be foreclosed upon, like it's not profitable. And also, it's said later, like there's a throwaway line about factory farms taking business away from small farms.

[00:35:43]And the big side evil character is a billionaire factory farm owner. So, it's very heavily implied by the movie that the reason why the animal farm isn't doing well is because of the factory farms. What profits are the animals not benefiting from that Mr. Jones is benefiting from? And not to mention that, but they go on to show the animals only running the farm successfully themselves like once. There's one very brief moment where they hold a farmers market to raise some money and otherwise the farm is never profitable under the animals either. I understand why they wouldn't want to be killed. Like it's not that I'm saying they wouldn't have rioted in this instance and pushed back, but what was the point of the speech from Snowball about this idealized farm where they're all equals? It doesn't make any sense. You see what I'm saying?

[00:36:27]So anyway, the only other big change to this part is that the reason why Napoleon wants to get rid of Snowball is that Snowball wants to ration the grain to make sure they have enough for winter. And Napoleon wants to eat it all right now. And then it's a water wheel, not a windmill, and Snowball wants to build it in secret because she says that the animals are too stupid to understand why it would be valuable to them. And so she's just going to build it and then tell them about it afterwards. And so Napoleon discovers this scheme, exposes it to the other animals, and when she's trying to pitch everybody on it, then he drives her off the farm being like, "Boring, boo, boring wheel. This sounds so boring, everybody. Great bit. Really funny movie." And as Snowball is being driven off the farm, she admits to all the animals that she was only doing it because she thought they were stupid.

[00:37:12]And then she leaves. But anyway, I'm not even going to bother breaking down the next 40 or 50 minutes of plot because it was pointless, super boring, basically nothing happened, and all of that setup did not lead to an ending that made any sense. So, they could have just cut from the point where Snowball gets driven off the farm to the ending, and it would have made an equal amount of sense. But I'll just generally explain that Napoleon is portrayed to be very stupid in the movie. And a lot of the decisions that he makes aren't framed as being like nefarious. Like he wants the animals to suffer or even that he wants like power necessarily as much as he just wants his life to be exactly the way he wants his life to be. And whatever happens to the other animals in order to create that, he doesn't care.

[00:37:57]And he's portrayed to be very stupid and not really thinking through the consequences of his actions and just making decisions in the immediate moment to make what he wants happen and not really thinking about the repercussions of it after the fact. And he's not really running the farm well at all. And again, there's really only one place where it's framed to be profitable in any way. And leading into the ending events of the movie, they have no food for winter and all of the animals are going to starve. Now, if they were basing Napoleon off of a certain current political figure instead of one from the past, then I would say that behavior actually does fit. And so, I don't necessarily mind that they made that shift if it had been interesting to watch. This is where I will disclose to you that I was the only person in the theater watching this. So, I was able to use my phone and my phone flashlight because I wouldn't have been disturbing any other viewers because I was the only person in there. So, it did help me take my notes. But I also during this period of the movie was checking my phone literally every 5 minutes to see how much time had passed because I was so bored. And it was just crazy to me because they threw those first 15 20 minutes at you. So it's like hammering out all this plot to get to this extra plot that they wanted to add, but the extra plot didn't say anything. It didn't do anything and it didn't add anything and it was super boring to watch. And not only that, but all of the dialogue in this movie sounds exactly like, you know how you're watching a movie and every once in a while there'll be kind of like a throwaway line where one character is like, "Why are you doing this?" And another is like, "Because the world hurt me, so now I hurt the world." And it's just like a super overhanded and on-nose piece of dialogue. And you're like, "Okay, dude."

[00:39:39]I'm not joking when I tell you every single conversation in this movie sounds like that. There is not a single natural sounding moment of dialogue in the whole movie. Literally all of it is like Napoleon being like, "We got to learn to stand on our hind legs or the humans will never respect us." And one of the other pigs being like, "But Napoleon, one of our core commandments was four legs good and two legs bad. Doesn't this violate that?" And Napoleon being like, "Yes, but we're the pigs, so we're in charge and we get to do whatever we want." And right there is the experience of watching this movie. I just saved you $12 on a movie ticket. So they speed through the beginning of the plot and then it just hits a wall. It's so slow and so boring. All of the dialogue is crazy unnatural. They're patronizing the hell out of these children. Just assuming they're not going to get the point of it at all and making sure that they have to spoon feed them exactly what the message is through the dialogue. The biggest crime to me was the the sheep that's played by Jim Parsons and his dialogue because the sheep in the book are supposed to represent sheep. Like people who are like group think hive mind will just regurgitate what they're told by leadership, right? That's who they represent. And so there's a pig in the movie that at the beginning accidentally has the wool sheared from over their eyes so they can see. And the rest of the movie he is the only sheep that's going against like the group of what the other sheep are doing when they're chanting stuff. But every time he does that, it's exactly this. The sheep are chanting, "Four legs good, two legs better." And the Jim Parson sheep is going, "Guys, that wasn't the commandment. Why are you yelling that?"

[00:41:17]There's a point where they're pulling the pigs on the cart. And he's like, "Guys, why are we doing this? Why are we just pulling the cart? Does nobody else see what's wrong with this?" Those aren't necessarily direct quotes. I'm paraphrasing. I didn't bother to write them down, but it's something to the effect of that. It's so overhanded. It's so on the nose. And again, that's what the whole movie sounds like. Genuinely, the only moments of dialogue that sounded like something a human would actually say are the moments when Seth Rogan is doing some slapstick bit that isn't funny. It's either that or we're staring down the lens and telling you exactly the point of the scene. And then you get to the end, and despite all of this time we've spent here, the ending makes no sense. animals are going into winter and they don't have any food, right? So, they need food. And the neighboring factory farm evil lady makes a deal with Napoleon where she'll give them free food for the rest of their lives if she's allowed to build a dam on the animal farm land. That's what she's wanted their land for the whole time.

[00:42:14]That's her goal. Now, I understand why the animals would have been against giving her the land just cuz they didn't want to deal with the humans. But I did mention in my Tik Tok that usually when they do plot points like this, what they want to build is like a Walmart. And when we found out that she was a factory farm supertore lady, that's where I thought they were going with it. But no, she wants to build a dam for renewable power. And they frame it out to be like, "But we're going to let the humans onto our land to build a dam. Guys, what's wrong with a dam?" Like, again, I get why the animals didn't want to give their land over, but like what's wrong with a dam? Water wheels are actually the most efficient form of renewable power, but whatever. But anyway, Napoleon makes this deal and it's obvious from the jump. None of the animals are happy with it. And there's this nefarious undertone to it. And so, you just know that there's going to be some other piece of information revealed. You just don't know what that is yet. And then they still have the part where Boxer goes to the glue factory. And Lucky finds out that Napoleon is planning on selling off all the other animals to this factory farm for them to live in horrible conditions.

[00:43:16]and that the free food for life deal is only for the pigs. This all leads to Lucky having his change of heart and so he goes and apologizes to all the other animals and then they hatch this plan to get back at Napoleon and embarrass him at the celebration for the new dam. Now, you heard that correctly. Their plan is vengeance. I only saw the movie once, so maybe I'm misremembering it, but I don't remember there being any sort of and this is how this leads to us getting out of the deal. It was literally like Napoleon really cares about his public image so we can get back at him for all this evil stuff he's doing by embarrassing him. They're just after revenge. What kind of lesson is that for a kids movie? Again, I I only saw it once, so it's there's a potential that I'm like misremembering it or that there's some nuance of it that I'm forgetting. But I do know that what eventually does free them was an accident and it wasn't an intended part of their plan. And that's actually a line from the trailer. So Napoleon is giving his speech at this celebration and this is where he drops the all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others line. Why? Why does he say that? Andy, I need an explanation. If you're going to include aspects of the original book in the original allegory, then you need to make them make sense within the context of the plot. You can't just throw that in there. Like this very much felt like, oh, this is the line from Animal Farm.

[00:44:35]It's the most famous line. on the 75th anniversary, they printed it in giant letters on the back like everybody knows the line, so we have to include it in the movie. So, let's just have Napoleon say it during the speech. So, Napoleon just drops this in the middle of the speech for no reason. And then the animals that are just trying to embarrass him for vengeance reasons start to play videos of him doing embarrassing things behind him and he does get very embarrassed and at some point they all accidentally trigger the fireworks. They were going to do fireworks at the end of this damn presentation. Dude, again, I only saw the movie once, but if my memory serves, there's no messing with the actual fireworks. It's just that they get set off on accident. Like, they don't do anything to change where the fireworks were angled. Why does them accidentally setting off the fireworks make it so the fireworks are all shot into the dam and then the dam explodes? There was something with a rooster, so maybe I am misremembering that. I don't know. This floods the entire farm. And then Napoleon and Lucky have a little bit of a showdown where it's implied that Napoleon dies and Lucky survives and all the animals sit happy on the farm staring out at the flooded lands that are undoubtedly destroyed. They have no food for winter, but hey, they're not going to the factory farm. And just to cover my bases, I understand why they wouldn't want to go to the factory farm.

[00:45:50]And so I get why they wanted to be free instead. But it just is really funny to watch them all be like, "Ah, we did it, guys. The farm is ours." And they're looking out at like flooded lands and you're like, "Buddy, you're not going to be able to farm there for years, dude.

[00:46:04]What are they going to do?" Doesn't matter. Movie's over. And Boxer lets us know that him and the other animals are cheering them on from the stars. Oh, what? Boxer? Yeah, Boxer, the cartor.

[00:46:16]He's been our narrator this whole entire time. How does that make any sense? This is a tiny gripe in comparison to everything else, but it pissed me off so much for some reason. The whole story is obviously told from Ly's perspective.

[00:46:27]Most of the events that we watch are stuff that Lucky witnesses or has active knowledge of having happened. And at some point in the movie, it cuts to a storybook moment where Lucky is explaining what happened to some younger animals on the farm. This implies that this whole entire movie has been Lucky telling this story to some baby animals, but it's not his voice over we're hearing. It's boxers. And at the beginning he's like, I got to tell you the story of this pig named Lucky. Mind you, nothing he describes basically the whole entire movie is anything that Boxer would have witnessed or had knowledge of. Like Boxer in narrative is very much a side character who's on the outskirts, but for some reason he's the one narrating it. And then he still goes to the glue factory and he's still the narrator. And the only explanation we get is that he's cheering them on from the stars. His voice only comes in a few times. Like what was the point? They didn't even need a narrator at all. But if you're going to have one, why not have it narrated by Lucky? And then that storybook moment would have made a lot more sense, too. Again, that's a tiny gripe, but maybe that gets across even a little bit just how terrible the writing was. And really, that was my takeaway.

[00:47:31]This script was awful. Like, I cannot believe that this didn't go through significantly more rounds of editing before it was green lit. There were so many problems with it. Pacing awful.

[00:47:40]Dialogue awful. Plot makes no sense whatsoever. Even little things like who the narrator is doesn't make any sense.

[00:47:47]And to top it all off, it's supposed to be an adaptation of a very eerie and dystopian book. Even beyond the way that they butchered the source material and the way that they just completely did not get it and did not say anything of value whatsoever, doing that with Animal Farm, given what's going on in politics right now is kind of a crazy thing to do. So, yes, they butchered the source material and it was tonally super off.

[00:48:10]Outside of that, it was also a terrible movie. And as if all of that were not bad enough, after the initial credits, there are these QR codes that pop up on screen. And you're supposed to scan one if you like the movie and another one if you didn't. And if you scan the QR code that said you didn't like the movie, then you got taken to a page that was like no, bad, wrong choice. And if you scan the one that said you like the movie, it took you to a donation link where you could donate directly to the production company, Angel Studios. Now, I have to legally protect myself and tell you that they claim that they use this money to show this movie to other people for free. I have no idea if that's true or not, but I'll tell you I'm skeptical. And I will also tell you that this is a very conservativeleaning production company. I don't know. It's hard because it's like what about the creatives? This is a stacked cast. Woody Harelson, Jim Parsons, Glen Close. They had a lot of really big names and I'm not sure why they were all I mean money probably. I don't know why any of them would agree to do a project with such a bad script, with such a conservativeleaning studio, with them butchering a story from a very famous socialist author. Like I just the right already has such a habit of twisting Orwell's beliefs and trying to frame it out like he would have been against a lot of these social programs and things that people on the left are pushing for and saying that this is so totalitarian and Orwellian like all the time. And so the right has been trying to really twist Orwell's legacy and imply that Orwell was like very against a socialist agenda which is just factually incorrect. He was like very loud and proud and out and about about being a socialist. I'll just point you back to the essay called Can Socialists Be Happy? There are a lot of people who cite Orwell to try and push their political agendas who Orwell would have spit on. And the right has been trying to twist his legacy, which is just fascinating to me because Orwell was the media narrative guy. And the idea of the government using altering what happened in the past and lying about it and trying to convince people that actually something else happened to manipulate the public in the present day is like a huge aspect of both Animal Farm and 1984. And so he was like the media narrative guy, the guy screaming from the rooftops about people manipulating the past to spread the message they want now. And there's so many people who manipulate him and his work to spread their political agenda. And again, we don't have to guess about what Orwell's political opinions were. He wrote about them extensively. He would have been very for a lot of the programs that a lot of right-wing pundits have pulled his name to fight against claiming that these programs would lead to totalitarianism and it's so Orwellian.

[00:50:51]And so there's just something to be about a right-wing studio taking his story and butchering it, seemingly almost trying to say this is what Animal Farm is to a younger audience. Don't go read the original book, which shows a very slow slide into totalitarianism with a leader that slowly takes more and more power over time and a people who aren't really concerned about that slow taking of power until it's too late for them to fight back against it. Why would Maga not want people to read this book now? I surely couldn't put it together.

[00:51:22]And that's where I'm saying like I don't necessarily want to rope Andy Circus directly into this because based off of what he said to Variety, it kind of seems like he also saw Trump in this the way I did. And some of the stuff that Trump is doing now very much fits into the Napoleon character in the book. And so the idea of doing this, but making Napoleon more like Trump than like Stalin isn't a terrible idea and kind of implies that that's how Andy Circus sees things right now in politics, but that's just not how the movie ended up. And I don't know who's responsible for what and all of that. I don't want to take any responsibility away from Andy Circus, but I just don't want to say that that was what he wanted the message to be either. It's possible that he didn't really have the power over the production company to fight for some of this stuff. The whole thing is really confusing and concerning to me and I can't help but feel like a large part of their agenda might have been to be like, "No, no, no. Don't go read the original Animal Farm. We'll just make an adaptation for you so you can come see it. That's Animal Farm, not this. Don't read this." I think everybody should read this. I think there's some very important things in here that people could take a lot away from now. And on that happy note, we're finally done with the video. My god, I'm so tired and I'm actually running really late, so I have to go. I can't do much of an outro and I can't re-record what I just said cuz my chair squeaked. I'm sorry. Let me know what you guys think in the comment section down below. Let me know what you want the 50K subscriber special to be. I love you and I'll see you in the next one.