Liz Declan is a senior editor for ScreenRant, primarily covering movies. She is a huge fan of Star Wars, the MCU and Supernatural. In addition to writing, Liz loves attending and covering conventions and interviewing actors. Find her on TikTok and Instagram @va.va.vera
With a voice geared towards the source material with decades of success behind him, Animal Farm This should have been a breeze. This only makes it all the more disconcerting that this film misses the mark at every turn, betraying the very message that George Orwell set out to convey in 1945. Animation by Andy Serkis Animal Farm has raised red flags since releasing its first trailer last December. One concern was that its animation seemed AI-generated even though it wasn’t, but a much bigger complaint was with the story itself.
When coupled with the animation style, the tone that was evident in the trailer alone seemed aimed at a much younger audience than one might expect for this story. Yes, Animal Farm has been taught in colleges for decades (although it has also been banned several times). But with its fart jokes and silly, over-the-top scenes, this new adaptation’s target demographic seemed even younger.
Right from the start, this is a problem. Orwell’s Animal Farmalthough it tells its story through animals, is a poignant and nuanced allegory illustrating how revolution and rebellion can lead to authoritarianism – even when ideologies start from the right place. Hardly material for the latest stupid children’s film. Any film version should be an exploration of how a seemingly free government can gradually take total control and manipulate its voters into ceding power to them. Instead, the audience for this unfortunately misguided program Animal Farm are treated to a famous pig named NaPoPo wearing bling and becoming a fanged caricature.
Animal Farm fundamentally misunderstands its source material
Orwell’s Animal Farm is directly inspired by the real-life history of the Russian Revolution, which saw the Tsar overthrown in 1917 (and brutally killed alongside his wife, son, and three daughters in 1918), only for this rebellion against the Russian Empire to eventually develop into the Soviet Union of Vladimir Lenin, and then Joseph Stalin. The pigs, stand-ins for the Soviet political leaders of the time, create the titular “Animal Farm” and refuse to live under the thumb of the farmers who exploit and abuse them.
In place of this system of power, in which farm animals are subject to farmers, the animals establish a seemingly free government and agree on seven commandments, which include rules such as “All animals are equal” And “No animal should kill another animal” although there are also commandments against things like the wearing of clothing or the consumption of alcohol by animals. However, over the course of the story, leader Napoleon manipulates these rules for his own benefit, eventually donning clothes and walking on two legs. He also committed many horrors, including the execution of dissidents. Even piglets are not exempt.
Chillingly, the book ends with the ruling pigs sharing a meal with the humans, with the two species now completely indistinguishable from each other. The public was right to doubt that a animated film for children could touch these same points. But the sins of this film go beyond the fear of young pig executions or the book’s haunting and unfortunate ending. The changes made by the filmmakers resulted in a complete bastardization of the original story and its meaning.
Instead of a critique of authoritarianism and an exploration of how dictators gain power, Animal Farm takes the laziest possible route to declare that absolute power corrupts absolutely. In fact, as if it were hadn’t held his hand enough at that point, the film forces the audience to convey this message by having Napoleon (Seth Rogen) say these words. Painfully on the nose, and, even more problematic, completely undeserved. The film didn’t demonstrate this point at all.
Rather than an insidious dictator who uses an ideology of freedom and equality to gain power, Napoleon is corrupted by the real “bad guys” of this version of history: humans. Freida Pilkington (Glenn Close), based on the farmer Mr Pilkington in the book (who is notably described as “easy to live with”), is the main villain, and she brings things like sports cars and facelifts to Animal Farm. There’s a message to be found in this exchange, even if it’s the crux of this film’s problem. Animal Farm abandons depth for a boring, puritanical critique of modern culture.
This puritanism permeates the entire story, right down to the use of the term “naughty juice” in place of alcohol, which is enough to embarrass any adult viewer. At the same time as it inexplicably sanitizes, the film also adds unnecessary plot, such as a budding romance between Lucky (Gaten Matarazzo) and Puff (Iman Vellani), neither of whom appear in the book. Lucky is an obvious insert character for younger viewers, although that only makes it all the stranger that the movie needed these piglets to complain about each other.
It is worth mentioning that the characters in the book who most resemble Puff and Lucky are the four young pigs who denounce Napoleon’s rule and are ultimately the first to be executed. This plight is far from the mundane happiness these piglets experience, with a brutal message about how helping each other is true freedom. In fact, there is no battle in the film, nor any direct execution. The closest the film gets is Boxer being taken away by a clearly labeled helicopter “thin glue” (because why trust the public to discover anything for themselves?).
Most egregious of all, however, is the image in the credits that depicts the protesters as pigs, implying that the protesters are part of the problem. In the end, Serkis Animal Farm replaces Orwell’s courageous questions with another: what if an animated film spent millions of dollars to bring a classic literary work with a legendary castto totally target the wrong demographic, completely abandon the message that has persisted for 80 years and tell a story that has nothing informative or valuable to offer its audience? It seems that some adaptations are much less equal than others.
- Release date
- May 1, 2026
- Runtime
- 96 minutes
- Director
- Andy Serkis
- Writers
- Nicholas Stoller
- Producers
- Dave Rosenbaum, Jonathan Cavendish, Nicholas Stoller, Connie Nartonis Thompson, David Rosenbaum, Adam Nagle
