In 1945, a man named George Orwell wrote a book called Animal Farm. It’s a political commentary based on the Russian Revolution, with the message that the cycle of authoritarianism cannot be ended by a revolution that replaces one authoritarian power with another, as power corrupts. The characters each portray prominent figures in the Russian Revolution: Napoleon, a pig, represents Joseph Stalin; Snowball, another pig, represents Leon Trotsky; and Old Major, a boar, represents both Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Spoiler warning, but the plot consists of animals overthrowing the humans in charge and putting the pigs in charge, as they are supposedly the smartest. The pigs, however, end up exactly like the humans in nearly every facet, oppressing the other animals and profiting off of their labor.

In 2011, a team had the bright idea to make another Animal Farm movie adaptation. By 2022, Andy Serkis and Nicholas Stoller were directing and writing Animal Farm (2025), a kids’ movie based on the literary masterpiece that is Animal Farm. Ignoring, for now, the obvious issue with a kids’ movie being made from a political commentary about the Russian Revolution, the movie isn’t even good. It has nearly the same plot as the book, except there’s this one good pig that we follow throughout. Spoiler warning again, but it also extends the plot past the book’s ending, making the animals revolt, drowning all the evil pigs and humans. It also adds several jokes that don’t add to the plot in the slightest.

The overall writing of the movie is lazy and poorly written, especially the humor. It mainly involves the animals not knowing how to do certain things, along with not having the same comprehension of situations as humans do. However, talking animals being stupid is hilarious to little kids, who the movie is targeting, so this is probably what they were intending humor-wise. I just think if you’re gonna make a movie for kids, maybe don’t end it with everyone evil drowning. To the most sensitive of kids, that’s causing some trauma, but even for the most cold-hearted kids in the crowd, it teaches them that the only way to get out of authoritarian rule is by killing the entire government.

Despite the ending being insanely dark for anyone with a working brain, the main characters of the movie seem to see this as a good ending. This not only ruins the original hopeless ending Orwell intended, but it leaves a question of the morality of those writing the movie. Do they think the only way to get out of authoritarian rule is by killing the entire government? Or did they just throw away the entire analogy that Orwell threaded so neatly into the book? I’m leaning towards the latter, because I don’t think I ever saw Joseph Stalin fart for 10 long, grating seconds straight on the big screen. But the fact that the animals got a somewhat good ending due to a revolution ruins the whole idea that Orwell was trying to prove: that revolutions are inconsequential when too much power is given to authority.

Additionally, making the main protagonist the one good pig ruins the entire moral Orwell was trying to portray: that power corrupts. Power didn’t corrupt this pig, but he definitely got power. The moral turned from “power corrupts” to “don’t let evil people take charge.” That wasn’t what George Orwell was saying at all, and adding that in just makes the movie seem entirely out of touch with politics as a whole. The concept of there being a pig or two that doesn’t get corrupted by power takes everything Orwell was saying about the cycle of authoritarianism and throws it to the ground, along with everything else he was trying to say.

Taking a political satire and removing everything that made it a satire, that made it a commentary, leaves you with a husk of the previous content. Turning something so heavy into a movie made for kids is never a good idea, because the target audience won’t understand it, and everyone who would understand isn’t watching it because it’s a kids’ movie. The book was like a tapestry of integral points, and the movie took that and ripped out the most important string, the reason it was created in the first place. This makes the finished product just a bunch of string.