We already knew leftists were Orwellian, but sometimes they surprise even us.
Eric Arthur Blair, writing under the pen name George Orwell, created dystopian fiction meant as a warning about totalitarian tyranny, particularly of the Soviet communist and German fascist variety. Classics like 1984 and Animal Farm are must-reads.
Well, here we are in 2025, and Orwell’s Animal Farm — a tale about the rise and predictable corruption of the Soviet Union under Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin — has been recast as a polemic against the evils of … [checks notes] … capitalism.
Long story short, Angel Studios was founded to counter the cultural rot coming out of Hollywood. Unfortunately, in the case of a new flick called “Animal Farm,” Angel seems to have succumbed to the kind of historical and content revisionism that has Hollywood in serious trouble. Instead of a thoughtful, short novel to entertain and educate adults, the upcoming animated movie is aimed at kids, and it seems the moral of the story has been turned on its head.
Following chapter after chapter carefully describing the farm’s long, slow descent into tyranny, Animal Farm ends with a poignant scene showing that the ruling pigs had become exactly like the corrupt oligarchs they had deposed. The promise at the heart of Marxism — a utopia full of equality, illustrated by the pigs’ initial slogan, “all animals are equal” — had been revealed as a lie, vividly depicted by the pigs’ final modified slogan, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
By contrast, we have the film. It’s animated and clearly aimed at kids to boost the indoctrination effect. It’s directed by Andy Serkis (of “Gollum” fame) and features the vocal talents of Seth Rogen (Napoleon — a.k.a. Stalin), Gaten Matarazzo (Lucky, a new character), Glenn Close (Frieda Pilkington), and others. According to the UK Telegraph, “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.” While driving a vehicle that looks remarkably like a Tesla Cybertruck (hint, hint!).
Similarly, the Manhattan Institute’s Rob Henderson says, “Napoleon (the Joseph Stalin character in the book) is rewritten to be sympathetic and Pilkington (who in the book represents the US and Britain) is rewritten as an evil billionaire.”
A key recurring problem in Orwell’s 1984 is the government rewriting history to say whatever it wants at that moment. The real history is deliberately forgotten in a ghoulish bit of gaslighting. I’m not the only one who’s joked about the Left using 1984 as an instruction manual, and if the early takes on “Animal Farm” are correct, it seems the movie’s lefties have done exactly that. They’ve hijacked a classic novel describing the corruption of their totalitarian ideology and used it to, instead, cast aspersions on their political adversaries.
It’s deeply ironic that Hollywood leftists have, like the pigs of Animal Farm, become exactly like the ugly capitalists they displaced.
