Is Animal Farm Hurting Angel Studio’s Reputation?

I was wondering how to discuss this. While BW Media Spotlight isn’t culture war related, ignoring the negative impacts of the culture war on storytelling is harder and harder to do. Angel Studios’ recent Animal Farm movie is part of the big discussion in storytelling not only because of the movie itself but Angel Studios appearing to do their own “diss” video. When Amandla Stemberg dropped her infamous “diss track” against classic Star Wars fans for not supporting The Acolyte and blamed it on bigotry instead of her show supporting the franchise’s bad guys and screwing around with the lore, it didn’t appear to be done by Lucasfilm or anyone else at Disney. When Robert Picardo attacked classic Star Trek fans for not supporting Starfleet Academy because it made Starfleet look like a bunch of morons, he just pointed a camera at some ducks and compared them to the fan base. Both were stupid but they weren’t done by the studio involved.

The above video, coming from Animal Farm‘s X-Twitter, is officially recognized and produced. So this attack on the fans is not doing them any favors. Whether Angel Studios themselves were involved or just the producers of the movie, it still reflects on them for not even acknowledging one side or the other. Angel Studios gained a lot of support for daring to release The Sound Of Freedom, a movie about fighting child sex traffickers. Nobody else in Hollywood wanted anything to do with it, not even people who support Cuties, but I’m going to leave that alone because it’s off topic and squicky. Although one of the jokes, intentional or not, is taken as a swipe against The Sound Of Freedom because one of the pigs calls his farts that. Even if it wasn’t referencing the movie, given everything else going on it’s not helping their case.

So I want to go over the arguments made by the video, explain what I see as the problem, and may put some perspective on this aside from the angry rants. There is a lot wrong with this movie, and of course the people who made it don’t see the problem. There’s a few comments in particular I want to focus on that show how little they understand about their critics and the movie they were making, and one is typical for Hollywood. For the record I have not seen the movie, nor do I plan to for reasons that will be clear in the review. This is going over the complaints by critics and disses that have become far too often from the Hollywood types and our old SEECA pals.

This would probably have been easier as a video, but I’m going to work with what I have here.

First off I do want to give credit where it’s due. They do acknowledge that trailers are used to pre-judge the movie. We only have so much time on our hands even when something is free, and money is also still rather tight at the moment. On the other hand, you can’t complain about people judging the trailer while acknowledging that’s what a trailer is for. if you aren’t getting your movie across correctly, that’s on you.

Of course, now the movie is out and people who have seen the full movie are saying that the interpretations of the trailer and the interviews were right. The movie DOES promote a form of communism and is anti-capitalist. You have to do more than say “but I hate communism” to convince anyone else.

Catch more from Disparu on YouTube

You can’t even blame this on the “right wing”. Some of those reviews and headlines collected by Disparu were from sites Variety, a mouthpiece for Hollywood, and Screen Rant, who most definitely don’t vote Republican. Influencers paid to promote the movie took down their posts promoting the movie even when it was a joint ad with other products, apologizing for promoting a movie they haven’t seen while the official response to the backlash complains about people putting down a movie they haven’t seen. Well now they have and they aren’t happy.

Of course, I personally can’t attest to whether or not the movie is anti-capitalist or falls into the whole “the right people haven’t tried communism/socialism yet and that’s why it hasn’t worked” camp. I’m not going to get into a political finance discussion because that’s not the point. The point is people who have seen it ARE saying that. The video came out before the movie, but they’re still saying it now, making the video look dumber. Supposedly the ending has a new scene where the animals overthrow the pigs like they did the farmers, and then just try the same system they just saw the pigs misuse for their own push at power, missing what Orwell was trying to say in favor of “the correct people haven’t tried it” message Orwell was not pushing in the book. The pigs represent Stalin and his overthrow of Russia and what it and the Soviet Union became under him even after World War II, which ended the same year Animal Farm came out.

And because I’m me I really have to address the “but it has talking animals, of course it’s for kids” part. While the book may not be the violence fest of Watership Down, a story that involves predators eating rabbits when they aren’t beating the living tar (there’s a pun in there most of you won’t get) out of each other or breeding, it’s not exactly for the same age group this movie appears to be targeting with its jokes. In a previous Saturday Night Showcase I showed you the other animated adaptation, used by the CIA as part of the Cold War but was faithful to the book for the most part. if that’s not good enough there’s the audio drama Orwell himself was part of. You can find the audiobook on YouTube plus a live-action adaptation. I don’t remember when I read Animal Farm but I was old enough to handle the tones of the book. Middle school covers 5th-8th grade in my area, but it had to be in the higher grades. The idea that “talking animals”=”kids book” is the same nonsense that held animation back and that both comics and video games have gotten around by making or pushing nothing for kids and even aging up comics that used to be for all-ages. Now we have Toyman killing kids and Professor Pyg surgically altering them. That’s messed up. Orwell making the animals talk and have personalities was needed to make them characters. That doesn’t make them Bluey.

They are trying to keep things from going full Stemberg or Picardo, or at least they were until they try to connect the naysayers to the pigs. They specifically meant the pigs of the story and not pigs in general, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better. The joke falls flat because it’s an intended insult meant to shame critics into, which Hollywood does a lot. “You don’t want to be like Stalin pig, right?” Speaking of which, they also note the issue with Seth Rogen, which they almost acknowledge was also not winning points given his reputation on stuff like Santa Inc, a Christmas special that attacks Santa Claus and the holiday. I have not seen a positive review of that one, either. The fact that his pilot for a relaunch of The Muppet Show was as good as it was (though not perfect) after what he did with that special and turning The Green Hornet into a goof up party boy. Adding “whether you like it or not” isn’t helping either.

So what is this doing to Angel Studios’ reputation? The video is from the movie’s promotional X-Twitter account. On the other hand, look at their reputation. The Sound Of Freedom was a movie the rest of Hollywood didn’t want to touch. This was their first big notice. Most of their other stuff have come off as pretty conservative, especially the kids shows on their streaming service…where you can’t even watch the free stuff without an account. They’re seen as politically neutral at the least and maybe right-leaning at most, where Hollywood is going so far left wing they’re about to fall off the bird. They’re seen as pro-Christian (Gabriel & The Guardians comes off as much a Christian work as the Narnia series, which Netflix is about to mess with by gender-swapping Aslan) at a time when Hollywood is aggressively anti-Christian. They put out mostly good family works as opposed to Disney’s “not so secret gay agenda” or Daily Wire’s lazy attempt at making a conservative version of the politically neutral Bluey.

The box office currently reflects how poorly this has worked, and as of this writing on Monday afternoon, going live Tuesday night because of how weird my scheduling and life are the reports are not good. I also need to add in this sentence because Tuesday afternoon dropped reports of the movie getting praised from a pro-socialist organization that traces its roots back to communist “news” sources. Angel Studios officially has been silent on the whole thing except through the movie’s own promotional outlets, even though it makes them look like they’re just a movie studio who saw an untapped market to start making money but now are just doing anything, if not outright gaslighting the right side from the start. Andy Serkis is directing, Seth Rogen is starting, and those are big Hollywood names so they assume they’ll come in. Serkis, who according to one commentator I heard today was part of the socialist movement in England and part of an actual group in the 1990s until he became famous, is already getting some early disinterest in his Gollum movie, which seems to only exist for the same reason Adam Driver was pushing a “Kylo Ren isn’t dead” movie–because he likes playing the character and getting a boatload of money to do it. For a studio still technically starting out this is not a good sign for them, to be seen as abandoning the principles that were boosting their status and the fans who behind the boost. The movie seems to not understand the source material, and joining the fan diss campaign makes them worse. Angel needs to at least distance themselves from the video if not the actual movie. They still have a chance to survive this, but this needs to be a good they acknowledge or all of the trust they built up the past three years is going to the slaughterhouse.