The worst Animal Farm adaptation.

A few days ago, a trailer was released for the movie adaptation of George Orwell's book Animal Farm, and it received a lot of negative reactions online. After watching the trailer, it’s clear that the makers are going for the satirical route with the number of jokes there were. It’s also clear that they made a lot of changes from the original story that a lot of people are not happy with. So, let's discuss these changes and why people are upset at them.

The biggest difference that other people and I noticed was the change in the overall tone of the story. The original story starts optimistically, which slowly turns into cynical and cautionary as the pigs’ regime worsens and becomes corrupt. The movie adaptation also has these tones, but they are very watered down to be accessible to younger audiences. While there is no problem with making things easier to understand for younger people, with tougher material like Animal Farm, it’s easy to lose the point of the story if made too simple. Many people have called this movie a Disneyfied version of Animal Farm, in that the makers took the original story of Animal Farm and made it bland and with too many jokes to appeal to a larger audience.

Based on the trailer, it is also clear that some plot points have been changed. The major one I noticed was that the animals opened up the farm for humans to visit. The whole point of an “animal farm” is that it’s self-sufficient, that they didn’t need outside help to survive. The seven commandments have also been simplified a lot. “No animal shall drink alcohol” is changed to “No drinking naughty juice,” and “Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend” is changed to “4 legs good.” I don’t understand why the commandments were simplified; it seems unnecessary to me since the original wasn’t hard to understand in the first place. Another thing I got from the trailer is that it's not really the pigs that are causing harm to the other animals. The trailer made it seem like a wealthy person was manipulating the whole thing instead of the pigs becoming corrupt from their own greed and power. I really don’t like these changes. I think that the makers are changing too much and are losing the original plot.

There are other changes in the trailer that people noted, like a new character and a modern setting, but I don’t think these have a big effect on the original story. People mostly seem upset that a story about corruption, greed, and power is being diluted to a simple comedy with simple themes.

Keep in mind that we only have a trailer right now; the movie hasn’t been released yet. A lot of things can still change now that the makers are getting a lot of criticism. Or maybe the trailer is supposed to be misleading, and the movie will do a complete 180. I can’t form a solid opinion until the full movie is released, but as of right now, I don’t have high hopes. Book-to-movie adaptations are never truly accurate anyway. I totally encourage you to go watch the trailer yourself and maybe read Animal Farm and form your own opinion on this topic.

(illustration by Irene Rinaldi)