George Orwell’s satirical allegorical dystopian novel “Animal Farm,” was first published in 1945. It was a reflection of events leading to the Russian Revolution of 1917 which was followed by the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin was the general secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and the premier from 1941 until his death (5 March 1953).
By 17 August 1945, the publication date of “Animal Farm,” World War II was drawing to a close. Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans (28 April 1945). Adolf Hitler had committed suicide 30 April 1945. The US dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima on the 6th of August and Nagasaki on the 9th.
The Novel
“Animal Farm” was originally titled “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story” making it nearly a beast fable. The satirical allegorical dystopian novella was meant to illustrate the events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. While the author was a harsh critic of Stalin, he was Las a democratic socialist–an important distinction for many in the US who confuse socialism with communism and even Stalinism.
The novel is set in Willingdon, England. Willingdon and Jevington is a civil Parish in East Sussex. The area has a population of about 7,440 as of 2011. It has low ethnic diversity with a White population of about 96.3%.
The animals on Manor Farm have been neglected by their owner, an alcoholic farmer named Mr. Jones. Things become so bad that near death, the oldest animal on the farm, a prize boar named Old Major, calls the animals together. He encourages the animals to revolt, teaching them the revolutionary song, “Beasts of England.” He believes that there can be an animal-controlled society where they would all benefit and live in peace. Three nights later, Old Major dies and two young boars, Snowball and Napoleon, rise to leadership and drive Mr. Jones off of the farm, renaming the property “Animal Farm.”
The animals adopt the seven commandments of “Animalism”:
- Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
- Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
- No animal shall wear clothes.
- No animal shall sleep in a bed.
- No animal shall drink alcohol.
- No animal shall kill any other animal.
- All animals are equal.
The rules are painted in large letters on one side of the barn.
Snowball teacher the animals to read and write. And yet problems already begin to surface. The cat doesn’t really work and comes and goes. The rats and rabbits are too wild to abide by any rules. Napoleon decides to take the nine young puppies of Jessie and Bluebell, two female border collies, and teach them separately.
While the farm runs smoothly under a green flag made of an old tablecloth, the pigs begin to set aside some food, especially milk, for themselves. Where the cows had complained that under Jones their milk was stolen and they had no calves, now the pigs reserve most of the milk for themselves.
Jones isn’t totally out of the picture. He returns with some fellow humans and attempts to retake the farm in the Battle of the Cowshed, but is ultimately defeated. Snowball understands that the farm needs to modernize and announces plans to build a windmill. Napoleon opposed the idea and has the dogs chase Snowball away.
Under Napoleon, the farm becomes increasingly under the rule of the selfish pigs. Napoleon slyly reintroduces the idea of the windmill and promises that if the animals work harder, they will have easier lives once the windmill is in place. The windmill is built, but due to poor workmanship, collapses and Napoleon is quick to blame Snowball of sabotage. He also begins to purge the farm animals who oppose him or even grumble, accused of collaborating with the absent Snowball.
Using the skillful words of a pig named Squealer, the animals are pacified into believing they are better off than they were under Jones. Yet the pigs are repeatedly breaking the seven commandments but also secretly rewriting them to conform with their current lifestyle choices which include sleeping in the house and walking on two legs.
A neighboring farmer, Mr. Frederick, attacks the farm and blows up the windmill, but the animals still win. Yet Boxer, the faithful workhorse, is wounded. He eventually collapses from old age and his best friend, Benjamin the donkey, realizes that he’s being taken to the glue factory. Squealer lies and reports that the van belongs to an animal hospital. Still Boxer never returns, but the money gained from his sale to the knacker is used to buy whisky for the pigs who celebrate Boxer’s death.
As the years pass, all the things that Snowball promised would come with the windmill–stalls with electric lighting and heating, running water, plenty of food and a three-day work week, never come to fruition. Jones has died. Under Napoleon, the animals actually have less food and must work harder. Napoleon explains that happiness comes from animals living simple lives, but the pigs all now walk on two feet, carry whips, drink alcohol and wear clothes while living in Jones’ old house. They entertain the humans they have allied with in the house and explain that they are able to make the lesser animals work longer hours for less food, something their human friends find commendable. While the pigs and humans gamble and cheat each other, resulting in conflict, the animals living outside look in and see that the pigs and men are really no different from each other.
In the original novella, Boxer wasn’t the only horse at the farm. There were two young mares: Mollie and Clover. Mollie is a vain white mare who loves ribbons in her hair and sugar cubes as a special treat. She quickly leaves after the revolution. Clover is a gentle caring mare and can read the letters of the alphabet but cannot read the words.
There is also a goat, Muriel, who is the only animal besides the pigs who can read. Like Benjamin, Muriel stays out of politics. Muriel, along with Jessie and Bluebell die of old age.
In the novel, Pilkington owned Foxwood, a farm near Animal Farm. He was a gentleman farmer who preferred to spend time fishing or hunting. He represents the aristocratic classes of the UK. When he eats dinner with the pigs in the final chapter, he compares the lesser animals to the lower classes. As a character, Pilkington has greatest prominence in the 2026 film.
Animal Farm (1954): Adult Animation with Donkey Hero ⭐️⭐️⭐️
By 1954, Joseph Stalin was dead (1953) and his successor, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, was in power. Khrushchev began removing references to Stalin. Krushchev’s speech “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences” was two years away (25 February 1956).
Winston Churchill’s 5 March 1946 speech in Missouri, had given the Communist block a name: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” The Berlin Wall (erected 12-13 August 1961) had yet to be built.
According to an article published in The Guardian:
America’s use of animated propaganda during the second world war is fairly well known, but propaganda made after the iron curtain went up is rarely seen or discussed. By the late 1940s, the CIA was spending tax dollars creating culture as a secret weapon to combat communism around the world. When Frances Stonor Saunders published Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, she mentioned a single animated film, John Halas and Joy Batchelor’s Animal Farm, which was made in 1954.
Saunders wrote that the CIA’s Office of Policy and Coordination had two members of their Psychological Warfare Workshop staff get the screen rights: Carleton Alsop and Finis Farr. Howard Hunt was the head of the operation.
Hunt selected Louis De Rochemont to be the film’s producer at Paramount. Before the war, in 1935, De Rochemont had created The March of Time, a new form of screen journalism that combined the newsreel and documentary film into a 15- to 20-minute entertaining short that went behind the news to explain the significance of an event. The March of Time, sponsored by the Time-Life Company, was a popular monthly series for over a decade before ending in 1951.
Hunt probably chose De Rochemont because he had once worked for him on The March of Time series. De Rochemont had also worked on socially and politically sensitive films for many years. He produced the anti-Nazi spy film The House on 92nd Street (1945) and Lost Boundaries (1949), one of the first racially aware films (it is about a black doctor who passes for white until he is unmasked by the black community).
The book “British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and the Consensus” by Tony Shaw suggests that the film was produced in the UK not only to lower the coast, but because De Rochemont “questioned the loyalty of some American animator” and “several people in the animation industry were blacklisted” as a result of The House Un-American Activities Committee hearings on communists in the film industry.
The film clearly is targeting an adult audience and was the first animated feature produced in England according to The Guardian article. As such the narration provided by Gordon Heath is rather dry. The animals aren’t cute or comforting. Most of the animals are voiced by Maurice Denham except for Muriel (Gille Cheslton) and Jessie (Eva Kaya).
While the first thing the audience sees of flowers and green fields of spring, these serve to contrast the blighted farm known as Manor Farm. Then we are introduced to the animals. Mr. Jones is first seen in the Red Lion pub. His face is an ugly ashen green color. The only animals that are named are Boxer and Benjamin because their names are on their shared stall.
Old Major is a darker pink or flesh tone. He is an unpleasant mound of flesh, old and dying. He exhorts the animals to rebel against Jones and teaches them the song “Beasts of England.” The next morning, Jones forgets to geed the animals and Snowball, a white pig, leads a revolt. The animals break into the storehouse for good and chase Jones away. When Jones returns with other farmers, the animals defeat them and then name their home “Animal Farm. They then destroy the farming tools that have been used to oppress them, and close the farmhouse. But Napoleon, a dark brown board with a white collar, takes a motherless litter of puppies under his tutelage while helping himself to some food that he doesn’t share.
The Seven Commandments of Animalism are written on the barn wall, but while the other animals cooperate to farm and produce food, the pigs begin to avoid physical labor and claim certain foods “by virtue of their brainwork.” In the winer, Snowball holds a meeting, asking for harder work and rationing while promising electric power through a windmill. Although the majority of animals support Snowball, Napoleon has the dogs he has trained run Snowball off the farm. From the sounds, Snowball has been killed and the narration says, “with Snowball disposed of.” Napoleon then declares himself the leader and claims Snowball is a traitor.
The animals will build the windmill, but Napoleon will frame is as his own plan. Boxer and Benjamin are the main workers behind the windmill, but they are not given adequate food or rest. The pigs increasingly consume more of the food and use some of the produce such as the hens’ eggs as a commodity to sell (to Mr. Whymper) for more luxuries for themselves. When the hens’ revolt, Napoleon’s dogs execute the dissenters. Their blood is used to change one of the Commandments from “No animal shall kill another animal” to “No animal shall kill another animal WITHOUT CAUSE.” Despite the misery of the animals, Napoleon declares the revolution is complete and Animal Farm is everything that was originally promised.
The farmers do attack with Jones blowing up himself and the windmill, but during the rebuilding, Boxer is injured. Instead of being cared for, he is sold to the Mr. Whymper’s glue factory. While Benjamin tries to warn the animals, they cannot save Boxer. Despite Squealer’s eulogy which include Boxer’s supposed last words that praise Napoleon, the animals are not convinced. Yet they are too frightened by Napoleon’s dogs to revolt.
In the end, Napoleon is able to rule Animal Farm and expand his influence to other farms that become pig-owned ventures, with the pigs all becoming more human-like (walking on two legs and wearing clothes). The other animals are severely rationed and given constant hard labor. The Commandments of animalism is reduced to a single phrase: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Benjamin spies on one of the pigs’ dinner parties and hears Napoleon congratulate himself for having the hardest working animals in the country with the lowest consumption of produce. Benjamin hallucinates and sees the pigs as Jones. Benjamin then rallies the other farm animals at his farm and others to overthrow the pigs and kill Napoleon.
Despite the simple 2D style, this BAFTA-nominated animated feature is rated mature because of its political allegory.
This variation illustrates a man’s world where the male characters dominate. The female characters such as the hens and cows (and even the bitch that had the litter of pups) are easily controlled and dismissed. An intelligent male character, Benjamin, is awakened out of his passivity and leads a revolt.
Animal Farm (1999): Hopeful Life After Hogs Wash Out ⭐️⭐️⭐️
By 1999, the political landscape had changed. The Berlin Wall had fallen (9 November 1989) during the Peaceful Revolution.
The world was in its first post-Cold War decade (1990 to 1999). The Soviet Union dissolved (26 December 1991). By the summer of 1990, most of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe had become democratically elected governments. East Germany ceased to exist as it became reunified with West Germany in 1990. By 1999, the active self-declared Communist states with ruling Communist parties were China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.
Communication drastically changed as did the global reach of information. The World Wide Web became public and brought with it the rise of Google and Amazon. This helped drive an economic expanse for the US. Other aspects of science also moved forward. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched (1990). Dolly the sheep was cloned (1996) and the concept of cloning became a reality.
In popular culture, it was the era of grunge, “Friends” (1994 to 2004), “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” (1990 to 1996) and “The X-Files” (1993 to 2002). James Cameron’s “Titanic” (1997) became the first 1$ billion film and “Jurassic Park” (1993) marked the beginning of a series. John Travolta’s career was revitalized with “Pulp Fiction” (1994).
There was tragedy as well such as the 1991 Gulf War and the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the Bosnian genocide (1992-1995). In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed and in 1995, there was the Oklahoma City bombing.
With the demise of Communism, falling under its own policies and the will of the people, the concepts of “Animal Farm” changed as well to reflect reality.
“It was a storm of judgment” a woman’s voice explains at the film begins. There’s some white liquid, dripping and being formed into letters. We see the lovely English countryside contrasted by wet white paint. “For years we had been hiding from oppressions, hiding from Napoleon’s spies.” The first animals we see are a goat and then a large bay horse, sheep and a donkey. “But now nature is washing away the disease.”
The narrator is Jessie (Julia Ormond), a tricolor border collie with cloudy eyes. She says, “I always knew that as with all things built on the wrong foundations farm would one day crumble. At last, the wait was over. The poisonous cement which held Napoleon’s evil dream together was being washed away. I could taste it in the water.”
She says, “I was old, I was almost blind, but I could still remember.” The white wet paint is for the sign “Animal Farm.”
Jesse remembers that Old Major (Peter Ustinov), an old Middle White boar, has had a dream and called a meeting on the day the Pilkingtons have returned. The Pilkingtons (Alan Stanford and Gail Fitzpatrick) are a grubby, loudly dressed affluent couple with two boys in a small crowded carriage being drawn by Mollie (Julia Louise-Dreyfus), a grey Andalusian who belongs to Jones. One of their boys uses a slingshot to tease the sheep and while their mother protests, their father isn’t bothered because they are “only dumb animals.” Jones is drunkenly plowing crooked lines with the help of Boxer with Moses, his raven (Charles Dale) as a companion.
Jones has threatened to clobber Boxer (Paul Scofield) with a rock, saying that he will turn him over to the glue factory. Jessie prevents Jones from throwing the rock at Boxer, but Jones lies on his back, unconscious until his wife comes and douses him with a pail of water.
Jones’ wife (Caroline Gray) has taken a train, off somewhere. She wants her husband to ask Pilkington for more money at a party that evening.
Old Major tells the animals that they are only given enough food to sustain them for the work they do. “And when our usefulness has come to an end, we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty.” Then he asks, “Who is responsible for our suffering? Man. Man is our enemy. ” Old Major believes if one removes man then the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever. “Remove man and the produce of our labor will be our own.”
Mollie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) worries that without humans, no one will brush and braid her hair and make her pretty.
At the party, Jones is worried about the money he owes Pilkington. Pilkington wants Jones to sign the farm over to him. At the end of the party, Pilkington is too drunk and falls asleep in a chair and Jones tries to plead his case, but to no avail. After calling Pilkington a pig, he leaves to find Mrs. Pilkington, who has insisted on staying overnight since her husband cannot drive her home, is in Jones’ bed instead of the guest room. That’s no mistake and Jones and Mrs. P engage in off-screen adultery.
Pilkington wakes up hearing the ruckus in the barn and investigates with a shotgun, killing Old Major. Old Major butchered, but who feeds raw pork to a dog?
Jones then goes to town, leaving without feeding the animals and returning too drunk to care. Boxer, a Shire, helps the animals break into the food. This wakes up Jones, but the animals chase him, his wife and the farm workers off the farm.
The Large White boar, Snowball (Kelsey Grammer) gathers the animals together and gives out the Seven Commandments of Animalism. Yet dissent is already begun. Napoleon (Patrick Stewart), a Berkshire boar, and Squealer (Ian Holm), a Tamroth boar, secretly meet with the Rottweiler, Pincher (Charles Dale), and get him to swear loyalty, not to Animal Farm, but to Napoleon. The narrator, Jessie, also gives births to puppies and Napoleon takes control of them to train. That’s not all. The pigs begin to hoard apples and milk.
While the villagers led by Frederick (Gerard Walsh) attempt to takeover Animal Farm, the animals are prepared and drive them off. Pilkington sees an opportunity. Learning that some of the pigs speak English, he begins to trade with them, selling them cheap farm equipment. While Snowball might have understood what was happening, he has already been driven off by Napoleon’s trained dogs. Napoleon takes Snowball’s plans for a windmill, which he had denigrated, and makes it his own.
The windmill is destroyed by Jones, but Napoleon blames Snowball. Then he declares that as a result, there will be a food shortage and the hens must surrender their eggs. While the hens protest, Napoleon takes drastic measures against them while Squealer begins to make propaganda films. The pigs also alter the commandments to allow them to drink alcohol and to kill other animals.
Boxer is injured during the rebuilding of the windmill and Napoleon sells him to Pilkington. Although Jessie and Benjamin (Pete Postlethwaite) realize that Boxer (Paul Scofield) is going to the glue factory, Boxer is by then too weak to escape. Jessie blames herself for not leading Boxer to safety outside of Animal Farm. When Jessie sees Napoleon entertaining Pilkington and Pilkington’s wife at the farmhouse, she realizes that they are no different. Muriel and Benjamin notice that now the commandment “all animals are equal” has qualified by the addition of “but some animals are more equal than others.”
Jessie leads Benjamin, Muriel (Jean Beith) and some of the other animals to freedom beyond Animal Farm. When they return after the end of Napoleon’s has ended with his death, they find a few of their friends have survived, including some of Jessie’s puppies. A new very white and blonde human family has purchased the farm and Jessie believes she can help them avoid the mistakes of both Jones and Napoleon.
Compared to the 1954 version, the female voices have more presence. Jessie leads the others to safety. Besides Benjamin, Muriel is intelligent enough to read. The level of craftsmanship of the creatures created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop is worth seeing. .
This live-action political dramedy was made for television. Directed by John Stephenson, the former vice president and creative supervisor for Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and winner of an Academy Award for Scientific and Engineering, the film was written by Alan Janes (“Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story”).
Animal Farm (2025): Pigs Gone Wild and Hogging the Spotlight ⭐️⭐️
In 2026, while Russia remains a threat, that is not because of Stalinism or Communism. As of 2026, the countries that are officially recognized as Communist states under the rule of a singular Communist Party are China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam. Russia is supposedly a democratic federative law-based state with a republican form of government known as the Russian Federation. Yet the country seems to be dominated by the United Russia party under President Vladimir Putin as an authoritarian, capitalist state with a centralized power structure.
I was sent this opinion piece by the “Animal Farm” PR people:
My Version of “Animal Farm” Has Sparked Robust Debate. Orwell Would Have Approved.
By Andy Serkis
When George Orwell sat down in 1947 to prepare a preface to the first Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, he produced a concise masterclass in personal and political biography. He whisks through his upbringing in British India; his education at Eton (“the most costly and snobbish of the English Public Schools”); his miserable service in the Burma Police; his living “mostly from hand to mouth” in Paris and drift toward socialism.
He then describes his major political awakening during the Spanish Civil War – where he was wounded by a Fascist bullet and then, having joined a Trotskyist militia on the side of the left-wing Republican government, he was caught up in the infighting as the Soviet communist-aligned forces gained ascendancy. His friends were killed, imprisoned or “simply disappeared.” He and his wife were “very lucky to get out of Spain alive.”
It was this experience that inspired him to write Animal Farm, with the goal of “exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone.” And he did, giving the world the immortal tale that has since sold millions of copies and been translated into dozens of languages. But to understand the story is to understand the contradictions within its author. He came from a world of great privilege but lived much of his adult life in near-poverty. He served the cause of British imperialism but came to hate it. He championed socialism but participated in the capitalist system and feared the tyranny of the far left as much as that of the far right.
Orwell’s wrestling with these forces within himself was evident throughout his life and growth as an artist. This is part of the reason why his work is still vigorously debated. Today, Orwell is claimed by both the political left and right. Each side can be relied upon to regularly tar the other as “Orwellian” – but neither has a monopoly on his ideas. These complications must be grappled with by anyone who engages with his writing, and all the more so by anyone who takes on the task of adapting one of his most famous stories.
When we first set out to make a film of Animal Farm more than fifteen years ago, the world was a very different place. We aimed to tell this story examining contemporary themes and references without being in any way partisan. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, no matter, who is in charge. I first read Animal Farm in school. It’s one of those books that carries us from childhood into adulthood without realizing it. Then as now, I found the story of Boxer the carthorse absolutely devastating – an honest, hardworking soul mercilessly crushed in service of a corrupt project and hauled away to the glue factory.
As I grew into myself as an artist, I continued to study Orwell and nurtured this dream to adapt his work, developing it bit by bit between Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes and other projects. I considered his contradictions and tried to drill down to the essentials of his worldview. He was against authoritarianism, no matter whose colors it wore; and he recognised the power of free expression, asking questions, and holding all leaders accountable to their people.
Orwell’s original subtitle for Animal Farm was “A Fairy Story,” and we made a conscious decision to be faithful to that conception. Working closely with the Orwell estate, we made a film that can serve as a parable in any environment, in any language. It has no ideology, but it does have idealism. Our characters enthusiastically embrace capitalism; what they rebel against is corruption.
Orwell’s genius in telling the story with animals helps bring serious ideas into the minds of young viewers. This was what inspired us to add a new character, Lucky, a piglet whose crises of conscience make real Orwell’s warning about the power of propaganda over enlightened, well-meaning souls. Younger viewers may laugh along with the animal antics and “fart jokes,” at which one early reviewer sniffed… but sniff a little deeper…as Lucky does when later realizing the leader he’s followed is a pathological liar, and you’ll hear him say the “only truthful thing that came of out of you was a bad smell.” Our hope is that these young engaging minds will hopefully ask serious questions of their parents and grandparents after the credits roll.
We want this film to inspire those kinds of intergenerational conversations, between those who witnessed communism’s defeat in the Cold War and those who will carry the ideals of freedom forward in a changing world, that will make sure Orwell’s message endures. As I hope he would have, I welcome the robust debate already touched off by the film’s trailer and encourage viewers to make up their own minds.
For me the key sentences would be: “We aimed to tell this story examining contemporary themes and references without being in any way partisan. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, no matter, who is in charge.”
This PG-rated version of “Animal Farm” begins in a safe space because we know that things ended well for our point of view character. In this respect, it is similar to the 1999 version. We see three adorable baby animals: a Doberman puppy that looks like a Rottweiler pup to me, a piglet and a chick. They are listening to a story about a pig named “Lucky.”
The narrator opines, “We all dreamed that one day all the animals would be free, working together.”
Lucky (voiced by Gaten Matarazzo) is a pink pig with a brown patch of color over one of his eyes. The farm has Dobermans with clipped ears and docked tails which is currently illegal in the UK unless performed by a vet for medical reasons (or in some cases, permitted for certified working dogs). We are not in the UK, but where are we? We are in the US.
The rumor on the farm is everyone needs to get on the truck because they are going on vacation. Lucky can read because Snowball (Laverne Cox) taught him. He tells Napoleon (Seth Rogen), a big pink and black pig Saddleback boar, that the truck says “laughterhouse” but it really is a Slaughterhouse truck by Pilkington. We have yet to meet Pilkington, but the tone has been set. The animals are being loaded by people in hazmat suits. A man from the bank, Mr. Whymper (Steve Buscemi), is pounding in a sign in front of the truck: “Seized by order of the bank.”
The drunken farmer Jones (Andy Serkis), is an oversized man in an overall and a red plaid shirt. He’s too drunk to do anything.
Instead, Snowball tells the animals to rebel and Shire horse Boxer (W00dy Harrelson) breaks down the doors and prevents one of the men from using water to spray and control the animals. Eventually, the animals run all of the men off the Manor Farm, but they are being spied upon by a drone that then returns to Frieda Pilkington (Glenn Close) and her high-tech monstrosity of an office. Pilkington wants all the land and in that area, the only hold out is Manor Farm. We learn when the pigs enter Jones’ house from the “Merica Tymes” newspaper headlines that “Small Farms Dying Out: Bigger Is Better” and that “Pilkington Farms: The Cream of the Crop” is the “New Player on the farming scene.”
The farmer’s home stinks of dirty underwear and hardboiled eggs. A chick is startled by its reflection. The rooster falls in love with a small statue of a chicken. One of the sheep accidentally activates a weed cutter and shears himself into a cut that liberates his eyes. There is a fart joke that will become important later on.
Snowball decides that the farm house should remain empty so that they will be reminded of what they must not become. Snowball has Lucky write down the rules what the book called the commandments of Animalism.
Snowball says, “Whatever goes on upon two legs is an enemy and whatever goes on four legs is a friend” which Lucky translates into “4 legs good 2 legs bad.”
“No animal shall wear clothes,” Snowball declares, but a female show piglet is already miffed. Snowball continues, “No animal shall sleep in a bed” and “No animal shall drink naughty juice.” There is also the commandments: “No animal shall kill another animal” and “all animals are equal.”
If this film is meant for kids, especially for those old enough to count, we’re already in trouble here. Kids will wonder about that “2 legs bad” part when there’s a rooster is holding a funnel serving as a makeshift megaphone cone to help Snowball’s voice project. Both of the previous film addressed this in some manner. This film doesn’t show the fowl even a bit flustered by that pronouncement.
Napoleon is presented as jealous of how Lucky looks up to Snowball and begins to undermine Snowball’s wisdoms. Yet there seems to be no acknowledgement of Snowball being female and where is Lucky’s mother? The border collies have been replaced by Dobermans in this version and the litter of puppies are quickly and without any quibble given up to Napoleon’s care. The ties of motherhood are again, easily overlooked, and that might be lost when it comes to the topic of cows and milk. Maybe in 2026, the audiences are too distanced from rural life and the facts of animal husbandry. Cows don’t produce milk unless they have calves. Where are the calves? Where are the bulls? If the film hadn’t spent so much time on the comedy of milking, perhaps one wouldn’t have time to wonder about these particulars.
There’s a lot of comedy about the milking of the cows but that leads to concerns about electricity. Snowball proposes a watermill. Napoleon twists this around and drives Snowball away, so that he becomes the leader of Animal Farm. Lucky succumbs to temptation of getting special privileges as a pig and he and the other pigs become the privileged class at Animal Farm. In need of money for things he wants, Napoleon begins to bank and eventually trade with humans. More and more the commandments are amended and twisted to favor the pigs, rationalizing their special status. The pigs begin to live a luxurious life with pools and cars and clothes and plenty to eat.
Instead of a windmill, the pigs unite with Pilkington to build a hydro-electric dam. Machines and hazmat-suit wearing humans come in to help. Yet the pigs and Pilkington also conspire against Animal Farms most faithful comrade in Operation Glue. An “accident” results in one of the hazmat-suited humans being pinned under a fallen excavator. Instead of humans using another machine to rescue him, only Boxer attempts to save the human. With a rope and a tire as a harness, he pulls without any help from humans or the other animals. Collapsing from the effort, Boxer lies helpless and that’s quickly reported by Napoleon’s loyal aide Squealor (Kieran Culkin) to Napoleon and Pilkington who are sitting elsewhere at poolside sipping cocktails. Also lounging in that pool is the vain piglet Tammy (Iman Vellani) and if Puff is Lucky’s same age girlfriend, then Tammy appears to be either Napoleon’s age-inappropriate girlfriend or his age-inappropriate groupie.
The Nicholas Stoller’s (“The Muppets” and “Muppets Most Wanted”) script can’t resist adding, “Boxer was the glue that held us all together.” Director Andy Serkis can’t smooth over the tonal shift from the tragedy of Boxer’s demise to this kind of pun.
Lucky is dumped by his piglet girlfriend Puff (also Vellani). Depressed by this and Boxer’s death, Lucky gets some guidance from Boxer’s bestie, Benjamin (voiced by Kathleen Turner) and rebels against Napoleon. The grand plan is to find a way to publicly humiliate Napoleon. That won’t be enough for this script. There will also be a fight scene and a fake-out death scene before the happy ending that the beginning guaranteed us.
The conclusion? “We dreamed of freedom, but we looked in the wrong place.” In addition, “We were never going to find freedom in a leader like Napoleon or even Snowball.” Why? Because, “Boxer thought that Napoleon was always right, but no one is.” Yet there’s a good moral lessons here: “You know what is always right: Helping each other.”
In terms of representation, the 1999 film made the pigs specific breeds which does not seem to be true for most of the pigs in this 2025 film. Only Napoleon is identified (Saddleback boar). The rise into prominence of female voices is a change, but is it a good one? Snowball is one of the leaders of the rebellion and while Lucky is a piglet, it is not clear what Lucky’s relationship is to Snowball. That makes a difference if part of Napoleon’s motivation is his jealousy of the Snowball-Lucky relationship.
When Snowball is expelled, where does she go? In an age of drones and cellphones and high tech, things don’t vanish so easily.
The most prominent female voice is Freida Pilkington, voiced by Glenn Close. (I’m not sure if people realize that Kathleen Turner voices a donkey, Benjamin.) While there was a Pilkington in the original novel, he represented the aristocrats and their attitudes toward the lower classes, giving more meaning to some being more equal than others. Here Pilkington represents both the bankers of the world and Big Ag.
Other female voices are Puff and Tammy, two show pigs, both voiced by Iman Vellani. Puff is Lucky’s girlfriend and Tammy seems to be the girlfriend of the much older Napoleon. That’s sort of an icky portrayal of not May-December, but more like March-December romance. Further, Puff and Tammy seem to replace the horses Mollie and Clover. In the novella, Mollie was the selfish, vain white mare who leaves Animal Farm to be spoiled by humans. Clover is a loving and supportive cart horse who is perceptive enough to notice the pigs’ corruption and understand how the altering of the Seven Commandments oppresses the animals, but she doesn’t have the ability to challenge the leadership. Without Clover and Mollie, Boxer becomes a stand-in for all horses. With Puff and Tammy take over the roles given to horses, the pigs hog the roles.
In this version of “Animal Farm,” it is Pilkington who is the main villain, determined to even undermine Napoleon. Both Pilkington and Napoleon are defeated by the animals led by Lucky, a mere piglet. At the end, the positive female voice is Lucky’s girlfriend/help mate.
The literacy isn’t limited to the pigs in the original novella. Clover is helped by Muriel, a goat, who is literate, but prefers to be a passive observer to the pigs’s corruption. Benjamin is also literate, but too cynical in the novel. In the 1952 film, it was Benjamin who starts to revolt. In the 1999 TV film, the POV character was the dog, Jessie, who saved some of the animal willing to leave the farm. Here it is a pig. The leaders of Animal Farm–Snowball, Napoleon and Lucky–are all pigs.
The cult of personality, something that surely social media has expanded beyond Stalin’s wildest dreams, isn’t particularly a partisan issue although the current presidential administration could be considered an example of that. It’s a shame that this version of “Animal Farm” doesn’t look at this aspect of the novel in a way that most kids could recognize, coupled with high tech and social media.
The problems raised by depicting a ruthless CEO of Pilkington Industries is that the exact threat of industrialization of farm operations is never clearly defined except in terms of science fiction fantasy where legions of faceless humans dressed in hazmat suits are going to slaughter animals and animals are no longer necessary. That is, unless the main message here is becoming vegan.
Large corporate farms or Big Ag are a threat to the agricultural landscape in that Big Ag has caused the decline of small family farms, caused there to be a consolidation of land ownership and a domination within the food supply chain. Industrial operations can cause severe environmental damage through excessive waste, water pollution and deforestation. Moreover, corporations tend to prioritize profits over sustainable practices and labor rights.
Massive amounts of animal waste can leak from large operations and contaminate groundwater supplies. Land can be deforested to grow food for corporate livestock, leaving wildlife little place to go. Large-scale farms often rely on undocumented labor and the workers can face long hours under hazardous conditions. There’s also a problem with local food security and the possibility of crop failure due to lack of biodiversity since Big Ag often focuses on large-scale export-friendly monoculture crops.
Yet while these are issues related to agriculture today, this version of “Animal Farm,” doesn’t take them on. There’s something formulaic in having a big showdown, a fight between the hero and the villain, in-fighting between mismatched allies and the good guys thinking the hero may be dead. Like the other two film, this version wants a happy resolution, but suffers from tonal confusion and if it was meant to be educational or inspirational, it fails.
“Animal Farm” had its world premiere at Annecy in June of last year (2025). It was released on 1 May 2026 in the US and Canada.
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