Animal Farm's Failed Adaptation Needs to Be Studied

Añadido: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Animal Farm is one of the greatest works of anti-authoritarian literature ever conceived. Written by George Orwell and published in 1945, the novel centers on a group of animals who overthrow their farmer. With that the status quo in order, the animals take over the farm and run it themselves, but the movement is quickly co-opted by a group of pigs led by the selfish Napoleon, creating an order just as authoritative as before to the point where you can't even tell the difference between pig and man by the time the novel winds to its conclusion.

[00:00:35]They can't tell the difference between them.

[00:00:39]Orwell, a democratic socialist, drew from dissatisfaction with the path taken by the Russian Revolution. The revolution had thrown out the old czar and his family and established a communist leadership. However, this leadership was overtaken by Stalin, who took the mechanics of this new communist government for his own selfish intents, sometimes referred to as Stalinism.

[00:01:01]Animal Farm is ultimately a story of how authoritarians steal political momentum to further their own selfish needs.

[00:01:08]Regardless of the intentions of the revolution, it can easily be co-opted by bad actors. And Orwell had a history with fascism as well as with communists.

[00:01:19]You once claimed that you have an ability to face unpleasant facts. Is that what you've demonstrated in 1984 by drawing an accurate portrait of the future? I think that allowing for the book being after all a parody, something like 1984 could actually happen.

[00:01:37]This is the direction the world is going in at the present time. In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.

[00:01:58]The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one.

[00:02:07]Don't let it happen.

[00:02:09]It depends on you. Orwell wrote this novel during the end of World War II where Britain and the Soviet Union had briefly unified against the greater threat of Hitler. It might be ironic in hindsight, but the novel actually got rejected by multiple publications in both America and Britain because they didn't want to offend Stalin. We don't want to piss off our new allies against Hitler. No, no, no. We got to make sure we keep them nice and happy. It's ironic how things like that turn around, huh?

[00:02:41]Especially considering its first adaptation in the '50s was co-funded by the CIA. The reason the CIA was funding it is because the novel had become kind of co-opted during the Cold War. It became a major text in the fight against communism, the Iron Curtain. America perceived the book as the greatest weapon that kids can use to learn about the threat Russia poses if they happen to take over the rest of the world thus spreading Cold War paranoia. If a person consistently reads and advocates the views expressed in a communist publication, he may be a communist.

[00:03:15]If a person supports organizations which reflect communist teachings or organizations labeled communist by the Department of Justice, she may be a communist.

[00:03:27]If a person defends the activities of communist nations while consistently attacking the domestic and foreign policy of the United States, she may be a communist.

[00:03:37]If a person does all these things over a period of time, he must be a communist.

[00:03:44]But there are other communists who don't show their real faces, who work more silently. [music] This is of course ironic because Orwell's brand of democratic socialism would probably have fallen under this umbrella of things that need to be stopped as the CIA saw it. The social model that best upheld the principles of freedom and equality, he argued, was >> [music] >> democratic socialism.

[00:04:09]Democratic socialism to Orwell didn't mean a welfareist version of capitalism.

[00:04:14]It meant using democracy to vote in a new, mostly classless society with centralized means of production and income levels controlled to the point of being approximately, but not exactly, equal.

[00:04:28]Orwell's support for democratic socialism motivated more of his work than many realize, as he explained in a preface for Animal [music] Farm.

[00:04:36]The book wasn't condemning socialism.

[00:04:39]It was trying to separate it from Soviet [music] communism and allow for a revival of socialism. Of course, very famously, 1984 saw a similar reinterpretation by just about every single political group out there, all of whom believe that 1984's vision of a horrible despotic future is the future that they fear, or the present when the other party takes control of the government. Animal Farm received multiple adaptations over the years, mainly two big ones, the animated film from the '50s and live-action TV movie from the late '90s, both of which I think have their merits, though the first one I think is the closest to the text. But the reason you've probably seen Animal Farm all over your For You page over the last week or two is because of the newest version directed by Andy Serkis. Yes, Gollum. Gollum is making an Animal Farm movie, and the distributor is Angel Studios, not the production crew, the distributor. Angel Studios focuses primarily on conservative media, such as the show The Chosen, the infamous film The Sound of Freedom, and David, an animated feature I swore was an AI film based on one of the stills I saw of it. It looked fake.

[00:05:42]This newest version of Animal Farm has an insane production story, though.

[00:05:45]Okay, get this. Originally, Serkis was not the director. It was actually going to be Rupert Wyatt, the director of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, who was working with Andy Serkis after producing that film. It was like a passion project for them. But then, Wyatt dipped, and Serkis was brought on to direct entirely. Now, Wyatt would go on to bigger and better things, of course, like directing a film for the Saudi Arabian government starring Anthony Mackie and Ben Kingsley that came out just last week, also. Or like 2 weeks ago. What? You didn't hear about the massive Saudi Arabian film that came out this past weekend? It's on track to be one of the most catastrophic financial bombs of all time. Anyway, originally Netflix was going to distribute Animal Farm. But then they bailed because they watched the film Andy Serkis produced for them, and it sucked. Without distributor, Angel Studios had to step in to distribute the film. So, when I say that Angel Studios was involved, they're really only involved with marketing the film, which means those MAGA-inspired hats that sell the movie, that's Angel Studios' idea, it's not Andy Serkis' idea. But the movie's out now, and we can all confirm it [ __ ] sucks. The film completely alters the plot of the original novel, adding a new central protagonist named Lucky. Lucky, being a pig, is now part of the ruling class takes over Animal Farm. Thus, we have a sympathetic eye into the class of animal that ultimately overtakes the status quo. But more glaring to me, also, is how they recontextualize the human threat in Animal Farm. In the original novel, Pilkington and several farmers try to regain control of the Animal Farm farm. They try to use violence, guns, whatever. But in this, we kind of condense a few of the characters into one singular villain played by Glenn Close. She's essentially this external villain that plans on buying out the farm even after the animals take over it. And she has apparently billions of dollars to just buy farmland. Again, that makes some sense, I guess. That's one way of reinterpreting the conflict of the book to a more modern setting. Instead of fighting it with guns, they fight it with dollars. That change doesn't bother me inherently. What does bother me is how the character of Lucky kind of pushes Snowball out of the limelight just a little bit. Snowball represents Leon Trotsky if we're doing the whole, you know, Napoleon is Stalin thing. He's an idealist. He's intelligent. He's passionate, but ultimately Napoleon overcomes him and uses him as a scapegoat for anything that goes wrong on the farm to cement his power. There's also the horse Boxer, another case of good. [music] He represents the worker, the less intelligent, less inclined to politics worker who faithfully believes the philosophies espoused by those in power to ultimately his own doom. Also, Napoleon is now Seth Rogen. What does that say? Laughter house. That sounds awesome. I'd love to laugh.

[00:08:30]Let's just put it out there right now.

[00:08:31]Seth Rogen is Napoleon. He's more like a lazy lout who is easily embarrassed by going on four legs and a true strongman dictator who successfully executes his political enemies and exploits external forces and conflicts including the infrastructure he builds failing to garner immense centralized power. To give you an idea how bizarre Seth Rogen as Napoleon is, the previous actor to play him was Patrick Stewart. There will be no more meetings, no more endless debates.

[00:09:03]From now on, a special committee of pigs will decide all aspects of the farm.

[00:09:07]Yeah, Patrick Stewart. This was around the time he was still playing Picard, just about to play Professor X, and was on stage playing Shakespeare.

[00:09:17]This is the caliber of character we're talking about here, and you have Seth Rogen doing this. Working together. I like the optics. Oh, we love the optics.

[00:09:29]What are optics? I think it's a kind of seafood. It's very telling how in the book, the final scene is the pigs and humans are playing cards over drinks, and the humans are taking notes on the sheer cruelty that Napoleon's pigs have enforced on the farm. Whereas in the film, we have something like that, only it's a big tech conference. It's a big Steve Jobs parody sequence. And the farm gets basically destroyed, and then the chance of rebuilding it comes shortly afterwards. Whereas in the book, >> [laughter] >> They can't tell the difference between them.

[00:10:01]resulting in a sense of dread as you linger with the thought that the revolution was co-opted and replaced by people who are indistinguishable from what came before.

[00:10:11]Welcome the new master, same as the old master. Whereas the film ends on an optimistic note. The farm is destroyed, sure. Napoleon's infrastructure is destroyed, sure. And Napoleon gets killed off, but there's the hope that they can rebuild in the future. That the answer was somewhere in the middle.

[00:10:26]Snowball was too extreme a revolutionary. Napoleon was too much of a dictator. We got to find a middle path between freedom and control.

[00:10:37]That doesn't seem like the point of the book though, does it? But you know, if I had a nickel for every big budget celebrity bloated adaptation of a beloved dark novel that completely missed the point of the original book that came out this past year, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

[00:10:54]>> Because we just finished having this conversation earlier this year with the godawful adaptation of Wuthering Heights. But I think the conversation surrounding Wuthering Heights and Animal Farm are a little different. But they also illustrate a commonality between the two as to why these adaptations of very dark works of literature keep getting made and keep failing. Emily Bronte's iconic gothic novel is a story about the cycles of generational cruelty, the border between flights of fancy and sheer obsession. How the inability to move on can lock entire people into acts of violence. And it's about racism, too, because Heathcliff, the main antagonist of the book and possibly love interest, is mistreated by his peers in part for being dark. It's unclear if he's black or Romani or just has dark features, but he looks different from everyone else, and that combined with his poor status in society at the beginning of the novel contributes to a sense of resentment towards greater society, but also his admiration and perhaps idealization of Cathy, his not really sister, but kind of someone he grew up with cuz his Cathy's father kind of took him in and it's unclear actually if maybe Cathy's dad Some people think Cathy's dad might have been Heathcliff's dad It's a whole theory, don't worry about it. Most adaptations truncate the novel to focus on the complicated relationships between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, while hinting at the framing device of the story. You see, the book takes place in two time periods, the past and the present, the present being 1802 something like that. And we see how the events of the past impacted the present of the novel, how echoes and ripples of those traumas have resulted in everyone involved being miserable and stuck in their own suffering. This is made most clear because of the sightings of Cathy's ghost. Cathy's ghost haunts the grounds of Wuthering Heights, >> [music] >> and Heathcliff is haunted by them. Is the ghost literal or is it metaphor of how we carry our guilt with us even after the events that hurt us are so long over. Despite being so bleak, however, the novel has reputation among people who haven't read it for being a great romantic novel, [music] like Pride and Prejudice. Personally, I blame Kate Bush for this. Her song is too catchy.

[00:13:08]Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights though is not an adaptation of the book, Wuthering Heights, but rather an adaptation of the version Fennell remembered imagining when she was thinking back to her childhood reading said book. In other words, the fan fiction she wrote about it. Well, I I the thing that [music] I felt so much when I kind of thought when I realized I was going to try and attempt to adapt [music] this God Gatrian book, I felt that the thing that I knew is I wanted to to make something that felt like my own personal emotional response to something because I sort of knew that I wouldn't be able to exactly recreate this thing that she'd made. It cuts just about half of the book out, removing the framing device, the cut forward to the then modern day, all discussions of Cathy's ghosts and the hauntings of the old manor, and any elements that make Heathcliff the villain of the story. In other words, he's just a romantic lead, and even then I think the original novel didn't really frame him as all that romantic. Like, take the character of Isabella for example. The she's the sister to Cathy's eventual husband, Edgar. Heathcliff marries her as a way to basically get back at Cathy for marrying Edgar. It's a whole big drama thing. In the novel, he is increasingly cruel and abusive to the point where Isabella questions if Heathcliff is the devil himself. And her story ends with her, after being passive and vulnerable for most of the novel, getting up and leaving. And she just never comes back to Heathcliff. She dies before ever returning to Heathcliff. But in the film, potentially to soften Heathcliff, cuz I guess Emily Bronte had a crush on him or something, Isabella is totally in on all the abuse. It's just a mutually consensual kinky relationship with dog play. I would like to point out that in the book, Heathcliff hangs Isabella's dog. Also, Heathcliff is Jacob Elordi, who is white, very, very white. And Cathy, who is a basically a teenager, like 18 or so, she's played by Margot Robbie, who is not 18. The book is about repression and how it can cause real infatuation to compound upon itself until it becomes a full-out obsession, a destructive obsession, a wave of pain that echoes through the years and hurts people who haven't even been born yet. But in this film, there is no oppression. Everyone's horny and having sex all the time.

[00:15:28]There's even a room painted the color of Cathy's bare skin, right down to the the veins on her boobs or something whatever. And it's pretty explicitly physical. And I think that there are very few books that [music] are as physically provocative as this book. And I think that for lots of us, the first time reading it was the first time we understood that actually [music] you can appreciate something not on just an emotional or an intellectual level, but actually in a physical one. It's opulent and gaudy and kind of remarkable for just how crazy it is for a mainstream picture. But same time, it's not batshit enough to be a camp classic like a John Waters film. In other words, it's an Emerald Fennell [music] film, the Vivziepop of live-action cinema. Yeah, I [ __ ] said it. Both Animal Farm and Wuthering Heights reflect a growing problem in the world of book adaptations, especially classic books that are difficult and challenging and kind of disturbing.

[00:16:25]There is an increasing distillation of how the books are perceived in popular culture, trumping over what the books are actually doing and saying. And this is especially true for books that are quote complex and dark like both Animal Farm and Wuthering Heights. A lot of characters, a lot of heavy themes, it's not pleasant, the ending is depressing, and they change it up. They soften it.

[00:16:49]They make it accessible to mainstream audiences. That is not to say that all changes are bad though. A great example of a film that I think is actually really good, but also has some similar problems as these two films is Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. And while I think that film is a triumph and also has Jacob Elordi in it playing a monster, maybe a more interesting monster than uh Wuthering Heights, the film suffers from a complete lack of subtlety. You are the monster.

[00:17:20]Now Del Toro loves the original novel.

[00:17:22]Like he's obsessed with it. He adores it. He's big Frankenstein bust in his house. But Del Toro also tends to romanticize monsters while demonizing mainstream society. So he makes his version of Frankenstein bend to that framework. It's not a great adaptation, but it is a compelling reimagining.

[00:17:40]Shelly's original argument in her novel was that human arrogance can lead to great disaster, that we are unprepared to walk in God's domain after opening up Pandora's box, and that society's cruelty can turn innocents, those born innocent, into monsters. Victor Frankenstein's greatest sin isn't active cruelty, it's short-sided self-preservation in the face of his own arrogance, the repercussions of his own actions. It's because he doesn't speak up when the maid under his employ is executed for the murder of Victor's brother that this maid dies, even though Victor knows his [snorts] monster killed his brother. He's accountable for his brother's death, but doesn't speak up because he knows if he does there'll be inquiries into how he knows what he knows and how accountable he is for the murder. So he lets someone else die instead. Out of fear, out of cowardice.

[00:18:28]His actions, his negligence, spurns the monster to be more violent. But the monster is still a monster, and he turned that way because people rejected him his entire life, abused him his whole life. Del Toro maintains that selfishness in Victor, yes, but he's also actively arrogant, cruel. He lusts over his brother's fiance. He shoves his benefactor down a big deep pit, and ultimately his cruelty towards Elizabeth is what causes the events of the finale to play out as it does. When it comes to the monster, the monster is shaped not by Victor's passivity or fear of it, but indifference. He almost seems bored of the monster after creating it, frustrated with having to raise a child essentially. He's not equipped for it, though he wanted to create it. On the other hand, the monster is very simplified. He is good. He is not evil.

[00:19:20]He is not shaped by cruelty. He only hurts others when they attack him first, and usually tries to do the right thing before doing a more violent, morally gray thing. The film takes a simplified approach and boils it down even more with Netflix's current style of removing subtlety from their film, so that if you watch on a second screen and miss something, you won't miss the point of a scene. Don't worry, they spell it out for you. You are the monster. This isn't necessarily bad, though, but I do want to emphasize that some adaptations don't have to be fiercely loyal to the original novels to be a good film, or even a good adaptation. You can take liberties. You can do things differently. The original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, for example, that all takes massive liberties from the original text. Granted, there was also the plays that were written between the publication of the book and the filming of the movie that the movie draws more heavily from, like with Dracula, it's the same thing, too, with their plays.

[00:20:13]But the version that James Whale made, both in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, and even Son of Frankenstein, from what I can gather as a third entry to this trilogy, all tell a cohesive story that lifts from the novel without being slavishly devoted to it. It works as its own story. Nosferatu is a loose adaptation of Dracula in part to avoid potential lawsuits over copyright, which it ended up suffering anyway. But it's also a compelling story conflating vampirism with the rise of the plague. And the plague was a fresh thought in people's minds at the time.

[00:20:43]The Spanish flu killed somewhere between 240,000 to over 400,000 Germans just in a few years.

[00:20:51]But these changes, though, aren't bad, necessarily. Even Del Toro's changes isn't contradictory to Shelley's ideas.

[00:20:57]They're just adjacent or parallel. On the other hand, Animal Farm and Wuthering Heights are contradictory adaptations of the original source material. Is New new Farm about authoritarian government co-opting revolution to rebuild itself? No. It's all inverted for something more simple, something more marketable. And again, I want to emphasize this is not always a bad thing to completely counter the messaging of your works. A good example of an adaptation that completely counters what came in the novel is Stephen King's The Shining. The Shining is about Jack Torrance. In the book, he's a good man who is driven to cruelty by his inner demons being the spirits of the Overlook or his alcoholism. Both exist as parallels for the other. When Stanley Kubrick adapted it, he changed it.

[00:21:44]Now, Torrance isn't the fear of your own demons. He is the fear of the cruel father, the cruel husband. He isn't a good man at all. He's a slowly ticking time bomb who has been going crazy since before they got to the hotel. The Overlook just sped up the process.

[00:22:02]Stephen King's novel is one ultimately about warmth and love in the face of dark influences. Kubrick's is not. In one, the hotel blows up in a fiery inferno. In the other, it freezes. But again, Kubrick is talented. The main problem I ultimately think is that both Animal Farm and Wuthering Heights are stories that change what they're about without reckoning with how these changes change everything. Animal Farm shifts from a critique of Stalinism to a critique of capitalism. The issue with its critique can best be seen with its two villains. While Glenn Close's character is a very clear-cut evil businesswoman, Napoleon is harder to figure out. He is certainly still saying the same things he says in the book.

[00:22:50]He's still doing a lot of the same things he did in previous adaptations, but there's something missing. He is victim to the indulgences of vice. He is tempted by wealth. He He tempted by status. He is insecure being on four legs and thus stands up in order to overcome his own insecurity. He is beaten by being humiliated. This means as a character Napoleon is not an embodiment of capitalist leaders.

[00:23:17]Rather, he is subject to its influence.

[00:23:20]Which makes him ultimately subject to Glenn Close's character. He may be the more personal threat, but he's not independent. This is unlike in the original novel where Napoleon is very clearly supposed to be Stalin. Book Napoleon co-opts a movement. Film Napoleon is [music] co-opted by a greater movement. In the books the humans are framed as deeply oppressive.

[00:23:44]They are forced that slaughters animals for profit and food. Production is made to the death and exploitation of the working class.

[00:23:52]There's a reason why the flag is a horn and hoof. The policies that are established to maintain balance and harmony overthrown by Napoleon. Some animals are more equal than others. We see Boxer, the horse, overworked to the point where his bones break. After which he's carted off to the glue factory by Napoleon. And that night the pigs [music] drank to Boxer's memory in the whiskey they had bought with Boxer's life.

[00:24:19]But in the film he gets hurt saving a human. And this softens the relationship between the working class and the ruling class. Romanticizing Boxer's fate as a noble sacrifice for someone else.

[00:24:32]Instead of a pointless result of cruel labor practices.

[00:24:35]What makes it all the more frustrating is how the book version of Boxer is basically loyal to Napoleon. Almost devotedly so. Believing the leadership knows what's best for everyone. Which makes him being sold to the glue factory under the false pretense of being saved and rushed to a hospital all the more cruel. Oh, and the fact Napoleon sells off Boxer not because they couldn't do anything for him, but to get whiskey.

[00:24:59]That's a cruel concept. Use all the money.

[00:25:04]Certainly, my friend. I like whiskey.

[00:25:08]But the concept the new film barely even acknowledges. They just call it naughty juice. They don't even call it whiskey.

[00:25:13]I mean, Boxer is still sort of a Napoleon in the film, also, but it feels less impactful. There's something missing there.

[00:25:20]I'm going to say something that might be controversial. It's actually okay if you want to recontextualize Animal Farm to be about the modern dangers of capitalism.

[00:25:29]But you got to do it right. Although he defended individual liberty, George Orwell was not a liberal in the traditional sense of the word. He was anti-capitalist, believing that capitalism is exploitative >> [music] >> and that money had distorting effects on truth.

[00:25:45]For example, writers might follow profit incentives and say what they think people want to hear rather than saying what they think is true.

[00:25:53]He also believed class [music] inequality led to inequalities in political influence, making capitalist societies inherently flawed democracies.

[00:26:03]The story doesn't reckon with the issues of capitalism in this film, just the aesthetics. Glenn Close rides a Cybertruck now. Okay. Napoleon wears a lot of flashy outfits. All right. But how does capitalism exploit the labor force? How is it focused on perpetual productivity over sustainability? This would have been a good place for Boxer to still overwork himself. That element of the plot works just as well in Orwell's work as it does in a capitalist reimagining of it. But the problem is they have to go for the more visually spectacular answer, and the one that frames humanity as not so bad. And likewise, those who take over the farm are also not that bad.

[00:26:43]>> There's the There's lack of point of view in the book and I felt it crucial that we saw the world through a young piglet's eyes, and so that and and goes on this journey of being morally corrupted and then finally the scales fall from his eyes and sees that he's made this the same mistake that we always do which is which is to listen to bad leadership or or be around people who are not good for us or to be or to accept or begin to accept lies and [music] you know it it it all and so so it really puts the young audience member in the in the in the center of all of that. The problem is the film focuses on the pigs. Lucky and the Ms. Marvel pigs, you know, the Iman Vellani voice pigs. And they're decent pigs.

[00:27:26]They're the good ones, basically. Even [music] in the face of the cruel ruling class. I mean, hell, the farmer's barely even a presence. The the whole rebellion against the farmer is played almost for laughs. And it doesn't seem significant.

[00:27:41]It seems almost easy running the farm.

[00:27:43]Everything is made more softer. The reason why Napoleon convinces everyone to go along with his plans are not because of threats of tyranny or threats of malice. He doesn't blame Snowball for the destruction of equipment he builds, his own failures, to motivate people to side with him more and more and more to rally behind him. He just thinks that Snowball's plans are boring and that hedonism, immediate hedonism, is the way to go. Which is underwhelming, I'd say, and detached from what actually happened. Don't forget, Orwell structured Animal Farm off the events of the Russian Revolution. Napoleon is Stalin. Every character is kind of correlating to a certain figure from history and their fates [music] correlate to what happened to those real people. So, Orwell isn't just pulling things out of his butt. He's pulling from a real series of events that happened and translating them into the fiction of his narrative. So, when you change something, it means you're ignoring how these systems actually function in order to tell a story that is more convenient, more simple, more fun for the kitties, with more fart jokes and butt jokes. Everything is made softer with characters who can function in society. The animals sell their wares in a farmers market to earn money for the farm, and to pay off the bank, basically. It never once feels like there's a violent conflict, like animals can get hurt. It feels very safe and very contained in the benefits of capitalism as well as its negatives, which is one reason why it fails. It celebrates capitalism just as much as critiquing it. There are multiple indulgent scenes where the characters buy things, drive things, wear new outfits, get new technology, look at new technology, and all of it services to make capitalism sound really cool, actually. In fact, the fact it works so well for the humans, but not for the animals, kind of is a problem in itself, isn't it? At least as perceived by the framework of the film. Because the humans are more sympathetic, and because the humans don't suffer under capitalism in this film, the systems that ruin Animal Farm just don't matter. [music] It doesn't seem determined, like the book does, to fully criticize the dangers of a system of order. While many want to point to Angel Studios and say they're at fault for making this film so misdirected and confusing, the reality is it's Andy Serkis. Andy Serkis did want to say something profound and moving and powerful, [music] but he also wanted to avoid being too political. And this war with his own approach is what I think undermines the entire film. And and then and then all of the other things, the fake news, the the the the way that we are constantly lied to, the taste makers who decide what's right and wrong, it's it's [music] it's sort of all in there, but it's not we've not been overtly political about it, which is why it's taken so long to make, because I think people's assumptions with with particular studios or whoever we've engaged with, they've always thought, "Oh, it's going to be a politically message-y film and and it's not going to be any it's not going to be entertainment and you would never get a a family to come and see it." And it's [music] absolutely for a family to to sit and watch together. The film shows the pigs indulging in the joys of capitalism, but the movie never reckons with how those systems function. Just tech CEO meetings, big dams, stadiums, flashy cars, flashy outfits, basic nonsense. To reinterpret Animal Farm as a critique of capitalism, it needs to be ground-up reimagining with thought put into each component, or it's nothing.

[00:31:23]And this film is nothing. Also, minor issue. I didn't realize it's still like we watch all the Animal Farm movies before this, but they all chicken out the end, you notice that? Every adaptation of Animal Farm, they end with Napoleon being overthrown. With each adaptation from the '50s onward, they remove more and more elements of Stalinism and communism.

[00:31:41]They don't say comrade in the '90s film, but they do in the '50s one. But as for Wuthering Heights, I will be honest.

[00:31:48]Somehow I think the Wuthering Heights adaptation that Emerald Fennell put out, the themes are less clear. There's no theme of generational trauma, there's no ghost, there's no obsession, there's no abuse. Half the time the film is just sex scenes one after another, which wouldn't be a bad thing if it felt like they were connected to characterization or further the plot or had any merit. Emerald Fennell turns this book into a bodice ripper ultimately with sex that look as luscious as a Harlequin romance novel cover. And yeah, they're beautiful looking sets, but the movie is deeply superficial. There's nothing going on in the surface because it's all flash on top. I guess that's true for both films though, isn't it? The superficial elements distract you from how hollow these films are. Animal Farm overburdens the plot with childish movie clichés like farts and cell phone gags and all that and pop culture references.

[00:32:39]Wuthering Heights is overloaded with Emerald Fennell sex scenes, [music] but not even good Emerald Fennell sex scenes. And one is so extreme by the way, that was actually cut from the film. These movies feel orchestrated to fit the conventions of tropes. And this implies they didn't have enough faith in the story to make it work on its own. Is Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship so dull we need a sex scene to distract from it? Is Napoleon's despotic rule so bland it needed pop culture gags in it and a mall montage?

[00:33:08]Animal Farm especially feels like an Illumination film in terms of pacing and style. And I think this is why adaptations like Del Toro's Frankenstein, despite taking liberties, despite having flaws, work and work well. Del Toro understands how to tell a story. The tone and style of his works reflect that, but he also does not distract from what his films are about. Arguably, he focuses on his elements a little too much. He's not subtle, but that's a minor critique. And the rest of the film is so good it's easy to overlook those flaws. The problem is that these additions feel additive. The problem is that we went through this in the '90s. The idea of distracting from darker elements with flash and kitty stuff. Disney decided to take one of the bleakest tragedies of all literature and turn it into a children's musical. No, no, not Hamlet, the other one they did that to. And he shall smite the wicked and plunge them into the fiery pit.

[00:34:03]Hunchback of Notre Dame is a pretty good movie that's at war with itself. Most of that film is an incredibly dark story that, while not faithful to the original book it's based on, feels aligned with it. Some sequences rank among Disney's darkest moments, which considering Disney was once known for being a dark company put out dark [ __ ] that's pretty impressive. However, to counter balance the extreme darkness of Hunchback, they added talking friendly gargoyles. So we even get a song number at one point. And the film grinds to a halt whenever these gargoyles show up. It's actually really easy to forget this, but most of the marketing for Hunchback, for this film, featured the gargoyles. Animal Farm is what happens if the gargoyles had 80% of the runtime. And Wuthering Heights is what the movie would be like if they turned Frollo into a romantic lead, and that thought is so revolting, I actually threw up in my mouth a little bit.

[00:34:54]Except, no, cuz Disney kind of did that, too, when they took Phoebus, who is a sociopath in the book, and turned him into the love interest. So, you see, it all comes together. Heathcliff, Phoebus.

[00:35:06]In the comments, tell me who's worse in the book, Heathcliff or Phoebus.

[00:35:11]I'm inclined to say Phoebus, actually, if I'm being perfectly blunt about it.

[00:35:14]This is why Hercules and Tarzan are simultaneously more consistent experiences that take liberties with the text, but also don't draw that same haunting quality that the most extreme elements of Hunchback do. But also, the extreme whiplash from seeing the scene makes it hard to judge Hunchback as a cohesive whole. So, maybe Tarzan's a better movie than Hunchback because at least it's consistent. Also, Tarzan has Glenn Close, too. You know, if I had a nickel every time there was a dark animated movie about animals that Glenn Close was in, >> I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

[00:35:45]>> is that these films we discussed, they cheapen their own product. They produce something that maybe is safer. Maybe the filmmakers didn't think these books from back in the day could hold the interest of modern audiences, or maybe they're just too dark. And it happens a lot. Despite coming out last year, The Electric State is a pretty much forgotten blockbuster by the Russo brothers. I mean, Avengers: Endgame. It took this haunting story of a society littered with the decaying remnants of IP and capitalism and turned it into just exploitative intellectual property smut.

[00:36:14]The Artemis Fowl film took a book about a villain protagonist and filtered it through so much Disney marketable slime it became an abomination that no one liked. And even The Lorax, a story about the dangers business poses to the environment, became a cheap copy of itself, which is best encapsulated by how the Once-ler, this cryptic character, became a figure of terror in the hearts of all who hung out on Tumblr in the mid-2010s. And I think of all these points about Animal Farm and Wuthering Heights, and I apply them here. These works that were made by people who were not confident that what they were making would still resonate with people. I don't even think Animal Farm being made to focus on capitalism over Stalinism is inherently a bad idea. It's a good pitch for reimagining, but the approach is spineless. It's not confident enough. It cheapens the experience by focusing on too many kiddified stuff. Imagine if it had the grit of the original work. But still, it could all be worse.

[00:37:14]It could be Ice Cube's War of the Worlds. It's you.

[00:37:19]It's you. Yeah. My own son is hacking the government. Amazon's adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel is a baffling decision, is the best way of putting it.

[00:37:30]The novel has been brilliantly adapted over the years multiple times. The original novel is a parody of British colonialism, giving Europeans a taste of what they were doing to Africa and South America. The famous broadcast in the '30s by Orson Welles brought the story to Americans as war broke out in Europe.

[00:37:50]We did on the show exactly what would have happened if the world had been invaded.

[00:37:54]>> The '50s film compared the Cold War fears to the aliens. The 2000s film captured post-9/11 anxieties and the war on terror. And Amazon's film is COVID-era paranoia and isolation.

[00:38:06]One of those doesn't fit, does it? I think War of the Worlds is a great finger on the pulse kind of story of what we are fearing, what we're thinking at any given time in our history. What are we afraid of? That's who the aliens are. Is it our own capabilities, a foreign government, isolation. That's what that means. The aliens are a reflection of ourselves, except with Amazons, because here the entire film is a reflection of commercialization.

[00:38:34]It's Amazon marketing its success during COVID. When the world shuts down, all we have are Zoom calls and Amazon drone deliveries.

[00:38:43]>> Uh Faith can load it [music] here and I can get it to you.

[00:38:46]Prime Air, the future of delivery.

[00:38:49]Save the planet for months. I need you to place an official order on Amazon to activate [clears throat] the drones.

[00:38:53]>> Nuts.

[00:38:54]We watch Ice Cube on a screen reacting to things on a screen. The film dehumanizes our conflicts, our emotions, and produces a barrier, a barrier through which we cannot feel human empathy. It's clearly a commercial for Amazon. I think that's why it garnered such an extreme reaction online because of how transparent it is about what it does, to a comical degree. But, it's doing the same crap that Animal Farm and Wuthering Heights also does. It takes a disturbing, deep story with many characters, and commodifies them to be marketable. And that's a bad idea in general. Think back to the fourth Matrix film sometimes. In that film, it makes fun of how companies will take beloved IP and commodify them. In that film, we see the Matrix and the machines have turned the events of the original trilogy into a mimetic copy of what came before, something to capitalize on and exploit. The film spoke of the continual exploitation of franchises past their end date, as we saw with the Matrix, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, and any number of franchises that never truly end, despite the fact they should have by now. But, now what we see isn't restricted to film franchises. It's books, too. The works of Orwell are puppeted and propped up like cadaver marionettes.

[00:40:19]So, naturally, I await 1984, a children's movie where O'Brien takes off the boot stamping on our faces forever and holds hands with Winston while farting through a PG rap song.

[00:40:32]You know it's coming. Don't Don't you [ __ ] lie to me. You know it's coming.

[00:40:35]What does that say? Laugh till you're hoarse. That sounds awesome. I love to laugh.

[00:40:41]The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one.

[00:40:50]Don't let it happen.

[00:40:52]It depends on you.