The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend Animal Farm (2025)

May 05, 2026

Napoleon (Seth Rogan) lets out a long, loud and clearly smelly fart, declaring, “You hear that? That’s ‘The Sound of Freedom.’”

That line is in the new Angel Studios film, Animal Farm. There is no possibility that Angel isn’t aware it was there. There is no possibility, they didn’t know how badly their own people would take it. This line is not a joke, it’s a mission statement.

Angel Studios was founded on the principle of not being like the rest of Hollywood.

This seems profoundly ironic given that Animal Farm is a story about a subverted revolution.

Andy Serkis, for whom this project was a labor of love, claims that it’s the story of Animal Farm that George Orwell would tell if he was alive today. He might even be close to the truth of it.

Something to keep in mind, Animal Farm and 1984 were co-opted by the American Right quite a while back. So far back that a lot people forget that Orwell was never anti-Communist. Animal Farm and 1984 were anti-Stallinist satires. Orwell never condemned the principle of “From each according to his ability to each according to his need.” There’s no indication that he ever gave up on the Utopian ideals of Marxism. He certainly never gave up his atheism.

“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.” - George Orwell

Animal Farm itself was written as a satire because Orwell was writing it during WWII when Britain was allied to Stalin. Consequently, allegory was all he had to work with, because naming names was OUT. But Animal Farm today is not really viewed as being inextricably tied to its time, yet it clearly was.

The new movie is an effort to reclaim Animal Farm for the Left. Consequently, the update and the satire selects modern targets . Quite a few characters and subplots have relevance only to historians of the period. Mollie, the stand-in for White Russians who fled the Revolution is absent. The raven, Moses, who was Orwell’s anti-Christian insert has been turned into a mute drone. Old Major, the Lenin-insert has been deleted completely. The Farmer has no real screen time since there isn’t much need for Nicholas II allegories in 2025.

The movie bulldozes its way through most of the major beats in about the first 25 minutes. It starts with Manor Farm being foreclosed on by the bank and the animals are all being sent to slaughter rather than being auctioned off which is what would really happen, but the movie needs to get off the blocks as quickly as possible. This does change quite a few things. The rebellion is not an idealistic workers uprising, it is a “when on death-ground, FIGHT!” situation.

Snowball is changed from Trotsky to a more modernist, out of touch coastal elite. She (Gender Swap, deal with it) makes the rules without consultation from the other animals. There is a hint of “never let a crisis go to waste,” in her actions. Snowball’s downfall begins because she justifies breaking into the house to get plans for a watermill (not a windmill). Her attitude is the rules I just made up must be followed by everyone rigidly including me – when convenient for me.

Napoleon’s methods are more subversive, he’s not Stalin anymore. He’s much more of a subverter, influencer and corporatist. And the pigs all dress like Tik-Tokkers.

Pilkington got the biggest overhaul, she is now Elon Musk. She drives a Cybertruck and everything.

There are a few new characters. Lucky, is an idealistic young boar, and audience POV character. His job is to repeat stuff the audience already knows, constantly. I mean he never stops doing that. There was also Puff and Tammy, two show pigs, one is idealistic and Lucky’s love-interest the other is a Tik-Tok influencer and firmly in Napoleon’s orbit. Both of these pigs are played by practicing Muslim Iman Vellini. Angel Studios wasn’t the only one having to compromise on principles (you know, just a little bit – just to prove you are a player).

Boxer is still the martyred Stakanov stand-in he’s always been, although the real Stakanov has long been revealed as being a product of Soviet propaganda.

Ms. Pilkington, with Napoleon’s help, eventually builds a dam in place of the water mill. They have a party where their faces morph into one another in what is supposed to be a call out to the last scene in the book.

This is followed by a brand new climax which is in no known version of Animal Farm. A proletarian uprising that restores Animal Farm as an isolationist hermit kingdom. It ends with hearing the voice of Boxer speaking to them from heaven…

Darklings (blinking in disbelief): In a movie based on an Orwell book. Rock solid atheist George Orwell?

Dark Herald: The compromises went both ways.

Rather than an anti-authoritarian satire this Animal Farm is much more an anti-capitalism, pro-collectivism satire. It’s take is that the Third-way has lost its way. But stops short of mentioning that these days all billionaires are socialists.

The movie itself is just plain bad, on a technical level it’s down there with Hoodwinked Too! The film is dull, the jokes aren’t funny and the animation is cheap and awful. It’s so bad it normally wouldn’t rate a review at all.

The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend Animal Farm

Normally, that line would be the end of a review but I really can’t leave it at that, this time.

Because the real story here is what this movie has done to Angel Studios.

Angel’s entire model is built on audience trust.

Angel Studios is directed by Angel Guild. However, projects presented to the Guild are first assessed by Angel Studios itself for “compliance standards.” Members of the Angel Guild are technically stakeholders but their shares are non-voting C-class shares. But since Angel is now publicly traded, the major (and real) shareholders are of course institutional investors, and they are the ones that must be kept satisfied.

The damage to Angel Studio’s reputation is going to be immense.

And they didn’t stop at shooting themselves in the foot, they cut checks to every rightwing influencer that would accept a check to promote the film. Everyone from Riley Gaines, to Red-headed Libertarian to Tucker Carlson put out social media posts supporting this politically leftist film, claiming it was a great movie (which pretty much proves they didn’t see it). It’s a little hard to check who got on the grift-wagon at this late date since everyone started deleting posts when this blew up in the wire.

There was a truly astonishing X post from an Angel affiliated Gold Star (meaning X verified business account) declaring that those who are against the film are like The Pigs.

Much more disturbing is that Angel Studio’s pay it forward model was applied to this movie. At the end of an Angel Studios movie QR codes come up where you can buy tickets for the under-privileged to come see this movie.

YouTuber, Real Life Fake Wizard applied for a couple of these charity tickets. This application was made on two different smurf email accounts and were sent on two different days. The reply to the email stated that he was number 1,127 on the waiting list.

He was number 1,126 on both replies.

Okay, I am willing - just barely willingly - to grant the possibility that this system is broken. It does happen with something this complicated, but why in Hell was it applied to Animal Farm in the first place!?!?

When you ask the audience to buy tickets for poor kids to see David or King of Kings, that is asking your faith based audience to support the film as a ministry. That’s fine or at least acceptable. But Animal Farm is about as secular as it gets, that request had no business being there.

This company was built on audience trust, at a time when that is a very difficult to earn and precious commodity.

And now Angel Studios is risking the trust that built it.

It’s audience was willing to forgive the shortcomings of budget limitations, uneven performances and even tonal misfires because as first the mission was clear.

But when a studio built on trust begins to resemble the industry it claimed to reject, the problem isn’t just that it distributed a bad movie. The problem is that it’s beginning to forget why its audience showed up in the first place.

Assuming (just assuming without prejudice) that this gargantuan failure was the result of quality control failure, and that it really was all on the Angel Guild then a much bigger and more foundational problem has developed, mission drift.

Most people would be shocked to find out that Harvard’s core governing document still states that its purpose is, “ for the education of youth in “knowledge and godliness”.and its motto remains “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” (Truth for Christ and the Church).

When you take one step away from what you claim your mission is, it becomes easier to take a few more. That’s not cynicism, it is institutional behavior.

Once you justify the first deviation, the rest of the steps downward become easier to follow :

“This one isn’t strictly faith-based, but it’s adjacent…”

“This one is more political, but still aligned…”

Until you reach the bottom of the hill and it’s now…