This Animal Farm is Orwell's Actual Nightmare

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]There's a certain scene that comes to mind from George Orwell's classic novel.

[00:00:04]It depicts a list of rules written on a barn door. Rules that form the foundation of a new society built by animals for animals. As the story goes on, those in power keep sneaking in and changing the rules gradually over time.

[00:00:18]Soon, four legs good, two legs bad becomes four legs good, two legs better.

[00:00:24]While more famously, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Why am I mentioning all this? Maybe it's because the newest film from Angel Studios, you know, a studio that claims to be valuebased entertainment, has me instead feeling that I'm living in some Orwellian nightmare. See, when Animal Farm was first written, it was a not so subtle metaphor for the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinist communism. Orwell himself was a socialist and it was a targeted condemnation at the new regime, taking it down for how it perverted the goals of the revolution to such an extent that the new dictators were hardly better if not worse than the SARS who were in charge before them. If we were to write the moral of the story upon, say, a barn wall, Animal Farm's entire moral of the story could boil down to Stalinist communism is bad. So imagine my surprise when in 2026 I came back into the farm and found this message had been scratched out and replaced with but capitalism is worse.

[00:01:23]Now just like the animals in Animal Farm, we all get to stand around and say wait a minute didn't that read communism is bad or something like that.

[00:01:31]Meanwhile, you have squealers who are typing away at publications like Wired to write articles declaring Animal Farm has always been about how capitalism is bad. you just don't remember it, right?

[00:01:41]With bold claims that say the nasty farmers exemplify the evils of commercialism. Next, you get Andy Circus jumping in to say, "This new movie is the story Orwell always meant to write from the beginning, or one he would have written if he was still here today, not realizing the hubris or irony of putting words in a dead man's mouth, especially given everything this particular man believed." Then you've got Angel Studios who's coming out of the woodwork and claiming this film isn't pro-communist or anti- capitalist at all. I was just completely mistaken. My eyes and ears lied to me. And also, I guess Andy Circus is lying to me considering he said it was about anti- capitalism in interviews. This is all really beginning to feel as 1984 as you can get. This isn't an adaptation of Animal Farm so much as it is just all the warnings from the book being blissfully ignored. It would almost be meta if it weren't so tragically accidental. 2026 Animal Farm is the antithesis to everything the original story is about. Because the book is about the dangers of erasing original meaning and messages and replacing them with new rallying cries, ones that are digestible and more easily repeated by the sheet. Now, before we pick up our pitchforks, let's make one thing clear here. I don't actually care if you want to make a film that is anti- capitalist, anti- big corporation, or hell, even pro-communism. I've said it a million times on this channel that a film with something to say will always be more interesting than one that has kind of nothing to say. It doesn't really matter if I agree with the argument or not. It's how it's presented and how it's integrated into the story.

[00:03:13]This though is something completely different. Animal Farm is taking someone else's story and then perverting the original message, which is all about the dangers of perverting the original meaning behind movements, twisting messages and words. It's the equivalent of if I went to go make the Lorax and decided to make it about the virtues of hard work and entrepreneurship instead and that it was actually a good thing that he made the needs and that he provided a great service to the community. Or if I decide to go make the Grinch and decide it's going to be about the values of atheism. This humilation COULD CHANGE MY ENTIRE OUTLOOK ON LIFE.

[00:03:50]>> REALLY?

[00:03:51]>> NO. WELL, it's not like you can't make movies about those values, but both of them would be just as bad of bastardizations as what I just forced myself to watch. For those who don't know, Animal Farm tells the story of animals who stage an uprising and overthrow their human owners, creating a farm run completely by animals, built to be the perfect utopia where all animals are equal and all wealth and materials are equally shared. Unfortunately, some animals are smarter than the others and they abuse that intelligence to subtly implement a class system over time. And through that, they begin to take over the movement and transform it into a totalitarian dictatorship. Most characters in the film are stand-ins for real life equivalents. The old major is linen, snowball is Trosky, and Napoleon is Stalin. It's Napoleon through his quiet charisma and an iron fist who quickly transforms the new animal society into kind of this hell hole that exists to prop up the pigs and the pigs alone. He gradually betrays all the values of the movement as they slowly return the farm to the old status quo.

[00:04:51]There are other metaphors back to Stalin's regime such as the dog puppies representing youth indoctrinated into becoming state foot soldiers. Then you've got Boxer who's the horse who represents the hardworking class who believes in the movement and its leaders. And then of course you've got the sheep who just blindly repeat the mantras. Animal Farm isn't just some innocent family film. The fact such dark and violent material got turned into a family film is a mystery in and of itself. The book has such scenes as animals turning against their old thought leader Snowball and then the dogs being set to just rip him apart. It features scenes of mass execution and has a character begging for his life and trying to escape a truck as he's being hauled off to be turned into glue. It's a rough scene. Circus excuses this adaptation as a kids film because the book contained the subtitle a fairy tale as if fairy tales are exclusively for children. GMO del Toro also claimed Pan's Labyrinth was a fairy tale and I wouldn't show a kid somebody's face being smashed in by a bottle. Angel Studios later posted a clip mocking their critics and said this.

[00:05:53]>> It's a story about talking farm animals.

[00:05:55]It's read by kids in middle school.

[00:05:56]>> As if a story about talking animals can't be horrifying. Clearly, they've never seen Plague Dogs or Waters Ship Down.

[00:06:03]>> The field. The field. It's covered with blood.

[00:06:08]>> Instead of a grim warning that is digestible to a middle school audience who is just able to kind of grasp these ideas, 2026 Animal Farm is turned into a film predominantly aimed at just 5-year-olds, complete with extended fart jokes. Not that those fart jokes really helped at all. The kids in my screening were so bored they were busy crawling over the back of the seats or kicking the folding chairs. Yeah, when that's more fun than watching your movie, you know you got a problem. Hell, even the propaganda version of the story from the 1950s, which was funded by the CIA, that one had a better grasp of the horror and maturity of the story. But then again, perhaps that propaganda was a bit of the point. One of the reasons Animal Farm is such a poignant rebuttal of communism is in Orwell's socialist ideology. He was not targeting communism as a mean-spirited takedown. Instead, he really is depicting the animals revolution quite positively in the beginning. His cynicism, as the story continues, comes from his frustration with human nature and how even a movement with the best intentions can be perverted by those more clever, cunning, or just rotten to their core. It is less a direct critique on communism as a system and more a condemnation on how easily the wicked can step in to abuse it and how easily people will accept it and go along with it. Far-left readers liked it for being an honest warning about how movements can go astray and how revolutions need to stay vigilant to stay true to their cause. Those on the right liked it as a warning for how the best intentions of communism can be a bedrock of sand, a system built with faults that can lead to just societal collapse or abuse by those in power. So naturally, this version manages to make neither side happy. In this story, the animals do not stage a communism revolution really at all. The farm is being foreclosed and it's the bank, not the drunkard, incompetent farmer that is about to send them to all be slaughtered. The animals are instead rebelling against bureaucrats that want to shut down the farm and kill them all.

[00:08:02]It's life or death. It's not some rebellion against their old way of life and those who rule over them. They're not seeking a better life for themselves. They're just seeking life in general. This leads to the creation of the farm where Napoleon does not lead as a strongman dictator, but rather as a buffoon who insults his rival Snowball with petty jabs before gently escorting him away rather than setting the dogs on him in a cutthroat coup. And when I say pig Stalin, my first thought doesn't exactly go to a chling Seth Rogan.

[00:08:30]Napoleon this one is trying to create this utopia with the animals and it only fails when a female Elon Musk arrives.

[00:08:37]And I am not kidding. That's not some joke. It really is basically female Elon Musk complete with a Cyber Truck. The animals innocent society is then corrupted by the influence of money, becoming hedonistic with their purchase of designer clothes, sports cars, and tablets so they can play Candy Crush.

[00:08:53]I'm not kidding. They are less like dictators and more like rich frat boys.

[00:08:57]But let's get back to that Wired article I mentioned at the beginning of the video. I called them squealers, which honestly may be a little mean. I called them that because in the book there is a character called Squealer who is the head of Napoleon's propaganda wing. His entire purpose is to spread the narrative of the pigs lying to the other animals no matter how ludicrous counter to the movement or contradictory to the animals own experiences. He's the ultimate gaslighter. In this article, Wy makes the argument that humans are representative of the toxic influence of capitalism. And I would wholly disagree with this analysis. Capitalism really plays little to no role at all in the books. It's not the focus of Orwell's eye. The closest Orwell gets in the book to mentioning capitalism in any form is in a rule that forbids any trade with humans. Not really money, just trade.

[00:09:44]Eventually, Napoleon does betray this rule like all the others, enriching himself and his pigs by openly trading with the humans. When Napoleon receives fraudulent banknotes, this ends up financially ruining the barn. To have the perspective that this is some anti- capitalist slant, that is fine. Art is subjective after all. I think even regardless of author intention, but I also think that this viewpoint is missing the forest for the trees. In the book, the humans are less representative of capitalists and more representative of the old ruling class that seeks to reestablish their control over the farm.

[00:10:15]In fact, the owner of the farm, Mr. Jones, is a direct stand-in for Zar Nicholas II, another dictator. It is one of the reasons the book ends with a scene where the animals watch through a window and the humans and pigs together are celebrating taking control of animal farm and also kind of arguing with each other. But as they watch, the animals can no longer tell which is which. The film also tries to do this in a very clunky way, but it completely misses the point of what that scene was trying to say. trade with the humans is less about the exchange of goods and more to do with Orwell highlighting how the pigs hoarded wealth and profits for themselves despite the claims of equality and resources for all. They justified it with a long string of excuses. However, when the pigs come into debt that that gets shared with everyone in the book, Boxer represents the hardworking class who believes in the movement and their leaders. His mantra is I must work harder and Napoleon is always right. He literally works so hard pulling boulders up a hill that he nearly kills himself. And what's his repayment? Does he get the retirement he was promised to each according to his needs after all? No. He is repaid by being shipped off and turned into glue. In the film, Boxer instead harms himself trying to save a nasty human capitalist who's trying to take over his home. It's not because his trust and dedication was misplaced. He's sold off more because Napoleon wants a bunch of money so he can keep living his rich lifestyle. In this film version, there is actually no rule at all about trade or money. And in fact, all the animals at the beginning use their money to sell their goods. The film depicting it as this corrupting influence over this newborn system. As soon as money is introduced, everything goes downhill.

[00:11:53]Most of Napoleon's most evil acts are not born of him abusing the system to consolidate power, but instead he's this foolish ignoramus being taken advantage of by Elon Musk, who is actually the real villain of the story. She's the one who tricks him into getting into credit card debt. Again, yes, this is real. I'm not making this up. This results in him selling off his land rights to her company and eventually selling off the animals themselves. So, again, he can keep living in luxury. It's only at the end that the animals rise up against the corporations and stage a full revolt.

[00:12:24]The entire film is from the perspective of a fake madeup character named Lucky who is indoctrinated into Napoleon's viewpoint and then breaks free of them so he can lead his own revolution and start the real animal communist utopia.

[00:12:37]Circus and his team completely missed every single message of the original work. They even try to tie everything together with a big red bow. taking a bleak tragedy of the animals crushed under the thumb of the pigs and turning that into a happy ending about their revolution finally succeeding and them getting everything they hoped. It's completely tonedeaf even by having them drown all their enemies, including Napoleon, by blowing up a dam. It lacks the biting metaphor of the battle of the windmill from the books that sees Napoleon forcing the animals to remake a windmill over and over and over again, then sacrificing their lives to defend it, only then for it to be blown up anyways. Yet after it all, Napoleon still claims it's some great victory.

[00:13:17]This is a call back to lives being sent through the meat grinder at Stalingrad.

[00:13:21]Again, even the anti-war messages seem to kind of get lost in the shuffle. Now, theoretically, could some of these ideas have worked narratively? Yeah, I guess if it was wellmade, which it's not. The animation looks like it belongs on streaming and the writing is exclusively for those under the age of seven. But even if this was Pixar grade storytelling, it would still turn my stomach. You've stripped away everything that made this story a timeless cautionary tale. You removed the entire foundation of the parallel and metaphor back to the Russian Revolution. And because of that, it all starts to implode in on itself. The context is gone. This whole story is a warning about the evils of changing the meanings behind words and the messages. And this entire film is changing the words and meaning of the original story to fit someone else's viewpoint. And maybe that's why this has done the impossible by getting both the left and right to come together and sing Kumbaya in hating this movie. You've probably heard this before, but this really does feel like if Napoleon himself took the book and turned it into a film. And that more than anything has made me feel this impending dread of some sort of dystopian future. And because of that, it makes this easily the worst movie of the year so far. It is an ugly little picture that is badly animated, badly voice acted, and just like Napoleon, betrays messages that were written in clear ink. And that is all I have for this one. Did you catch the new Animal Farm? I kind of pray that you didn't.

[00:14:46]Stay well away. Let me know what you think is the worst movie of the year so far. Put it down in those comments down below. Once again, 1921 in film is almost here, as well as who killed the Star Wars sequels. So, be sure to subscribe for those. As always, keep those reels turning. Thank you.