Lefties love to call capitalists “pigs,” so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see that the new, animated version of Animal Farm aimed at children is an allegory with the message that capitalism is very, very bad.
But I am still surprised, proving once again that I am not cynical enough.
The new Animal Farm movie: “Rather than serving as a critique of totalitarian Soviet Russia, the film shifts its focus towards the dangers of capitalism and corporate corruption.”
Unreal. Reread the book instead. A classic I revisit every few years. https://t.co/vrmKFjZSuM
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) December 14, 2025
I wouldn’t want to underplay the significance of corporate corruption, of course, but my take on it is quite a bit different than the left’s. While the left sees the increasing power of corporations as one reason to increase the power of government, the real lesson is that power itself is corrupting, and it is remarkably stupid to create an even more powerful and corrupt institution to keep in check an already too powerful class of people.
Maybe less concentrated power is the solution, not more?
Nah. Best to teach children that government is the solution to everything.
The final image in George Orwell’s novella Animal Farm is bleak and unforgettable: as the pigs and farmers drunkenly play cards around the dining-room table, the watching animals realise their porcine liberators have become indistinguishable from the human oppressors they replaced.
The moment exposes the lie at the heart of the Marxist promise of utopian equality. Yet a new animated adaptation of Animal Farm, directed by Andy Serkis, offers a strikingly different take.
The film, which spent 14 years in development and struggled to secure a distributor, retells Orwell’s 1945 dystopian classic through the eyes of Lucky, a plucky piglet whose character is invented for the adaptation and voiced by Gaten Matarazzo, the Stranger Things actor.
In this CGI retelling, Serkis, who rose to prominence as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings before turning to directing, has said he wanted to make Orwell’s work “accessible”, not “overtly political”, and suitable for a modern audience.
The whole idea of taking a book whose message is a warning that utopianism is really the path to dystopia and turning it into a children’s tale is, in itself, stupid, and, ironically, the actor who voiced Gollum in The Lord of the Rings is trying to lure children into an evil ideology.
Looking forward to the 1984 remake about the dangers of free speech, how Big Brother was just misunderstood, and that Winston Smith was the bad guy all along. You think I’m joking but how surprised would you be if that movie were made today.
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) December 15, 2025
Orwell famously warned that totalitarians seize control of history, and hence reality itself, to impose their will. Totalitarianism relies on force to keep people in line, but what distinguishes it from mere authoritarianism is that it aims to control not just the bodies of its subjects but their minds.
Rather than serving as a critique of totalitarian Soviet Russia, the film shifts its focus towards the dangers of capitalism and corporate corruption.
Serkis has also sought to give the story a more optimistic ending. Explaining why at a round-table discussion at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival last July, he said: “We wanted some hope.”
In the final scenes, Lucky confronts Napoleon, Orwell’s Joseph Stalin figure, voiced incongruously by Seth Rogen, before the animals overthrow their pig leaders and plan for a better future.
A still from the film adaptation of Animal Farm, directed by Andy Serkis, best known for playing Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films
When a trailer for Serkis’s Animal Farm was released on Friday night ahead of its cinema release on May 1 next year, it prompted outrage and confusion online, with critics accusing it of abandoning Orwell’s central warning about the impossibility of a Marxist utopia.
Napoleon’s despotic traits appear muted when set against a new billionaire villain, Frieda Pilkington, voiced by Glenn Close, another invention for the film. She spends much of the story plotting to take control of Animal Farm.
The promotional clip shows stylised cartoon animals briefly living in apparent utopia before the pigs’ ideals are corrupted by Frieda, who is depicted driving a high-tech vehicle, which resembles Elon Musk’s Tesla Cybertruck. The producers said any resemblance to Mr Musk’s electric vehicles was accidental.
Turning Animal Farm into a “hopeful” story in which Seth Rogan battles a billionaire who drives a Cybertruck in order to create a better future is, shall we say, rich.
Hollywood is incapable of critiquing anything other than capitalism, exhibit #13890471 https://t.co/X7kbBWQSGJ
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) December 12, 2025
So why would a leftist choose, of all novels, “Animal Farm” to convey the wonders of socialism and the evils of the free market? It’s obvious, really. As with Critical Theory, which is so important to the messaging of the left these days, the most powerful tool in the toolbox is redefining words and concepts to twist respected ideas into their opposite.
Ironically, the first version of Animal Farm put to film was also animated, and it was similarly used to promote propaganda and took some liberties with the original story.
That version? The CIA secretly created it, putting an exclamation point on the idea that government is not the answer to concentrated power.
Serkis is not the first director to take liberties with Orwell’s novella. The 1954 animated adaptation was secretly co-funded by the CIA as part of its Cold War efforts to counter communism, with the agency influencing changes to the script.
The use and abuse of Orwell is itself a cautionary tale.
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