So they're threatening us with an new Animal Farm movie

 

I was innocently scrolling through social media when a trailer for an CG film starring animals started playing. My settings mute automatically so I just saw a few seconds of CG pigs smiling. Those pigs look creepy when they smile was my reaction, and then I moved on with my life.

A few days later I saw those creepy porcine smiles again, this time as part of a thread of comments denouncing the film, which is how I learnt that it was an Animal Farm movie, and that Seth Rogan voices the Napoleon character. Oh, joy.

Look, the film has not been released, it's scheduled for release on the 1st of May 2026, that's International Worker's Day, and from the bits shown in the trailer it looks to be a modern retelling of the dangers of capitalism. I don't particularly wish to watch it and I have no expectations for it, but I won't write it off before it comes out. Though I do have things to say about an Animal Farm but capitalist reading, which I will come back to later on.

 Before we move on, I have a question for you. Have you read Animal Farm? I'm not being cute, I think it's one of those things where the discourse/gossip that surrounds it is more well known and more famous than the story itself. And I think that's partly to blame for the majority of the confusion and abuse of that name. So, if you haven't read it, I would recommend you do so. It's quite a short read it's a novella and most versions don't include Orwell's preface making it even shorter. It's public domain in the UK and can be found online fairly easily, here's the first version I read many years ago. 

 No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

A brief summary,

 Our story is set on Manor Farm, a typical farm in the 1930s England, the Farmer Jones is lazy and drunk. The Animals are growing dissatisfied with his stewardship of the farm, eventually tensions explode and a revolt led by the pigs succeeds in overthrowing the hated Jones and the animal's find themselves in charge of the farm. Not knowing what to do now, the animals consent to letting the pigs take the vanguard position, and they administer the farm. The pigs promise equality and a new life free of exploitation, but work needs doing, so the other animals provide the muscle and work to the pigs plans. Overtime, the pigs gain and enjoy more privileges and their rule becomes far less popular, by manipulating language, fears and the use of force the pigs under their leader Napoleon from a dictatorship and in the end they use the wealth of the farm to parley a seat at the table with the human farmers. The quotation above comes from the final scene, where the pigs entertain a group of human farmers. It's not as iconic as "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" but it represents the same message and is key to the author's intent with the story. 

You may have been aware that Animal Farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution, and it is, although just knowing that fact without familiarity with the work will obscure the main point of the story.  Many readings of the book and its other film adaptations will focus on Napoleon being like Stalin and other events that have parallels with early soviet history and then deduce something along the lines of "Animal farm is an allegory about the dangers of revolution and how they eat their own" this might be what they got from it, but I don't see that in the story and from what I know of George Orwell. For starters, Jones is seen as a tyrant who needed to be overthrown, the problem is in the aftermath and how the pigs behave.

The other animals don't act like the pigs, many are shown to be devoted to the cause they work and often die for. Their problem is that they allowed the pigs to occupy positions of power over them and the pigs grew accustomed to the trappings of power and their own self-importance and corrupted themselves and their revolution. The pigs are the Bolsheviks here, you see. 

There is a sort of restoration theme in Animal Farm, but the return of the status quo is the crux of the depressing ending. You're not supposed to think it's good that the pigs act so much like their former masters that the animals can't distinguish between them any more.  

 

The pointlessness of an anti-capitalist animal farm

From the trailer the 2025 Animal Farm film casts its Napoleon as a tech bro capitalist, it's not the first time someone came along and wrote an anti-capitalist version of Animal Farm, there was an unofficial sequel where Snowball (a pig heavily coded as Leon Trotsky) returns from exile to the farm and leads it in a new business friendly way. Neither of these re-imaginings can escape a core problem, and that is that we already have a definitive attack on capitalism to George Orwell's Animal Farm. It's called Animal Farm, it was published in 1945 and was written by George Orwell.      

Going back to the quote, the reason that the animals can no longer distinguish between the human's and pigs is so damning of an ending is what both represent. The pigs represent the communist party, I don't know anyone who would dispute that, but what many seem to miss is that the humans in the story are the capitalists. They're allegories for the capitalists who rule the world, they take the eggs, and milk and meat etc. from the animals and sell them for a profit. That's an allegory for the capitalist system, the produce is the commodities produced by workers labour time and power. 

So, when the animals can't tell the difference between the two, Orwell is accusing Stalin and his party cronies of using the language and symbols of socialism to trick the population while he builds a capitalist economy. This is not a surprise, throughout the story the pigs use and exploit the other animals to make a profit, and it's their ability to control a restive farm and conduct good business that turns the humans who initially rejected the pigs as usurpers other to letting them take part in the wider community. 

That is a very simplified criticism of the Soviet Union, but one that is based on a wider criticism of capitalism. It's good that Jones is gone, and it's a tragedy that the new rulers continue to behave like him and represent the same cruel dynamic. The pigs are usurpers, but not because they dared to take Jones's rightful property, they usurped a genuine movement to end tyranny and exploitation. 

This gets overlooked all the time by liberal critics and deliberately ignored by the "communists" who comment on the work. I can understand the former, the phrase missing the forest for the trees springs to mind. The clear parallels to Stalin and the Soviet Union are so obvious that its wider message gets lost. It doesn't help that much of the intended audience has its own blinkers on, since Animal Farm is obviously the Soviet Union* which was different from the USA which we all know is capitalist, so the capitalist dimension is overshadowed. I think this is the result of buying into capitalist propaganda, the idea that capitalist economy is built on an abstract freedom and not the material class relationships of boss and workers. Workers in both the USA and USSR were alienated and controlled, they're worked on what those above them chose for them and in the manner decided for them, and the results of their work, the products and materials were sold off, and the profits went to the powerful. There are differences between a board of directors and a state planning agency, sure, but the foundations of the economy are the same. 

A film where Napoleon parties and drives a Tesla might be entertaining, I doubt it, but it is possible. However, it will always be redundant. We already had that story in 1945.

 

Appendix One: The 1954 film, aka the CIA movie

"You'll laugh and cry a little!" good to see lying has been a cornerstone of marketing for so long.

 

 Thought it's best to deal with this one while we're here. In 1954, just four years after the death of George Orwell, the British studio Halas and Bachelor released a full length animated adaption. The animation is excellent for 1954 and is arguably the first feature length animated film released in the United Kingdom. And aside from a few changes (we're getting to), is a faithful adaption of the story. But that's not why anyone talks about this film.

No, all that anyone talks about when the film comes up is the presence of the CIA. It's true, two executives who worked for the CIA bought the rights to the film from Orwell's widow then used Rochemont as a front who selected Halas and Bachelor to produce the film. This was unknown to everyone until historian Tony Shaw uncovered the financial connections. So, I think we have an excellent example of the damage propaganda can have on art. Even when it produces a technically impressive and moving work, the real purpose of it hangs over it.

Regarding those changes, the film's wiki entry helpfully lists them and some potential changes that were not made. A few that stand out, adding scenes where some animals who are content have no interest when learning of the revolution in Animal Farm, I get their intent, but the result is a short and succinct demonstration of what marxists call false consciousness. There were also animals in the novella who didn't see why they needed to fight Jones either, 

 Some of the animals talked of the duty of loyalty to Mr. Jones, whom they referred to as "Master," or made elementary remarks such as "Mr. Jones feeds us. If he were gone, we should starve to death." Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead?" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?", and the pigs had great difficulty in making them see that this was contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The stupidest questions of all were asked by Mollie, the white mare. The very first question she asked Snowball was: "Will there still be sugar after the Rebellion?"

Another concerns Snowball being too good and the need to make him just as bad as Napoleon. Well, that mission failed Snowball is still seen as the good of the two pigs and his murder by the dogs reads as tragic. Another change due to pressure was the reduction of humans and the focusing on Jones as the evil one. 

But the big change concerns the ending. Orwell's novella ends with the animals broken, the film ends with the pigs being overthrown. I personally don't see an issue with the bad guys being overthrown, it's a change, but the novella's ending was the way it was because it was released in 1945 when Stalin stood triumphant. In 1954 there had been revolts, including East Germany the year before. To me the bit of the changed ending that is a problem is the replacement of the human visitors with other pigs. These pigs are clearly stand ins for the soviet sattelite states of East Germany, Bulgaria etc. This means that Napoleon hasn't been accepted by the wider capitalist world. But, to my great surprise the ending keeps the trigger point. It still keeps this bit.

 No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

They see the pigs acting like Jones the human and its that which drives them into a frenzy to overthrow their masters. So, the CIA funded a film based on a work where the villains are evil for adopting capitalist methods and despite wielding great influence kept that criticism in the film. Its not just in the ending either, throughout the film the pigs constantly trick, pressure and cajole the other animals into working so they can profit from their labours. Animal Farm is ruled by a brutal clique who spend other people's money on booze, clothes and automobiles, and this is somehow different to the USA how?

Again, I really think you should read the novella, the criticisms of capitalism are entwined within the crticism of Stalin.  

Oh and one final note on the changes, while reading the book Orwell Subverted:The CIA and the filming of Animal Farm, I came across the CIA's negative reactions to the first proposed uprising ending where the human guests are preserved.

 This dramatic reversal of the book’s downbeat conclusion notwith-
standing, the memo argued that, as scripted, the final sequence, which
included men and pigs, was ‘‘ambiguous at best’’ and ‘‘at worst’’ was an
‘‘endorsement of . . . anarchism.’’

So, there you have it, keeping the anti pig and human theming of the Novella is an endorsement of Anarchism.  

 Appendix Two: The other Animal Farm movie

 

Somehow this poster even more misleading than the 54 version

Did you know that there was another Animal Farm film? It released in 1999, and it uses the voices of Patrick Stewart for Napoleon and Kelsey Grammar for Snowball. It also uses some CG animation but mostly relies on animatronics, puppets and real animal stuntwork. It was also faithful to the Novella and as far as I can tell was not funded by any intelligence services. Oh and the pigs don't look creepy when they smile.

 It doesn't get brought up ever when Animal Farm is being discussed. I guess its marketing failed, its trailer and posters make it look like a Babe Big in the City knockoff. Its a shame really, its a strong adaption. Again the biggest change is the ending, some animal's after seeing the pigs and humans pal around to the point it is impossible to say which is which they run off and escape. Then years later the regime has crumbled and collapsed. I suspect that change was due to the film releasing in 1999 years after the soviet union crumbled in on itself and collapsed.

If you want a faithful adaption of Animal Farm this will probably remain the best version available.  

Taken together the Novella and the two films represent an interesting timeline, we have Stalinism triumphant (1945), in trouble (1954) and death through decay (1999).  

 

  *Which makes me wonder how younger readers react to it since they have no memory of the Soviet Union to base their thoughts on.