As unpleasant as it is to compare one’s life in the 21st century to the toils of a 14th-century English peasant, Paul Greengrass’s The Uprising (2026) makes it all but impossible for any viewer even moderately aware of the current state of affairs to ignore this apparent reality.
Backed by the dreary imagery of an untended English fen and the plague-ravaged streets of London, Greengrass’s film follows (with a good deal of accuracy) the true history of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, a citizen movement protesting unfair taxation from the ruling class while the Kingdom of England was recovering from the Black Death. During this short but bloody (and, briefly, successful) rebellion, the peasantry—which at the time represented around 85% of the population—marched, in the name of the King of England and of God, on the elites in London, breaching the Tower of London for the first and last time in history. The revolt was ultimately put down by Richard II, the very king the peasants had imagined as their own. Though it might be seen in retrospect as a failure, one must note that most accounts of the Peasants’ Revolt were written by those adversely impacted by the events. In truth, the revolt created massive, lasting consequences as an inspiration for the mobilization of the English peasantry in the 15th century and remains in the English consciousness as a bastion of the working class’s power in outrage.
The Uprising is the latest ripple in the pool of civic unrest resulting from the stone cast 645 years ago by English peasants. Greengrass states that “it was just very eerie how contemporary it all felt” when he was writing the script following the COVID-19 pandemic. The film is a response to a climate of social, economic, and political unrest similar to that which was experienced by the 14th century peasantry. With leading man Andrew Garfield additionally stating that he hopes any billionaires watching the film will be “scared shitless,” the makers of the film have not been attempting to hide their intentions of drawing comparisons between today’s and yesterday’s abuses of wealth and power on the part of the ultra-elite. In the film itself, this intended message becomes even more obvious—grossly so, when Garfield’s anonymous “Ploughman” character, like millions of Americans since the beginning of the second Trump administration, explicitly demands “no kings.”
Evidently, The Uprising is less a work intended to inform audiences about the past than it is to spur reflection on the current state of global affairs. While it seems to defeat the purpose of historical fiction to create such a piece with the intention of drawing the reader’s eyes to the present rather than the past, the opposite is true; a work of historical fiction says far less about the period it claims to write about than it does about the period it was written in. Such is the case with works from The Iliad to The Hunchback of Notre Dame; Homer is of relatively little assistance to the scholar interested in the true history of the Trojan War (if such a thing existed) than it is as an insight into the storytelling, intellectual, and theological culture of 8th century BCE Hellas; Victor Hugo’s historical works might serve to mislead someone seeking to assemble a picture of the inner workings of 15th-century Paris, but it certainly offers insights on those of the mid-19th-century Paris in which Hugo was writing. Similarly, The Uprising’s historical accuracy is of far less importance than its significance to and commentary on the world in 2026.
Greengrass is clearly aware of this fact. Through dialogue like, “All will be well once the poison of wealth is removed” (said to Ploughman by another peasant in the movement), “You stupid old men” (from the fourteen-year-old King Richard II, to his advisors), and “I am what I do” (from Ploughman, explaining his refusal to offer his Christian name), as well as heavy-handed symbolism in the literal burning of written promises from the ruling class to the ruled and Ploughman’s ultimate masking of his identity as a whole to become an anonymous actor of the people’s outrage, the film ensures that its message is heard in all corners of the theater.
Though the lack of subtlety makes the film feel banal and cynical regarding the screenwriters’ and director’s expectations of the audience’s ability to grasp the underlying messaging, a work such as this does not necessarily need to weave the message into the film via obscure cinematography. After all, in today’s attention economy, artists have to constantly do more to capture their audiences not only physically but also mentally. Much commercialized media has been intentionally oversimplified to adapt to casual viewership, as is the case with Netflix, which expects much of its content to be “second-screen.” The need for Greengrass to state his “no kings” message outright to force the connection is more concerning than the film’s resulting lack of subtlety.
The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was brought about by people who, in the face of widespread injustice, put aside their petty differences, recognized their collective grievances, and organized against the ruling class. This is the most important lesson The Uprising offers the contemporary viewer: political participation requires political awareness. In the Information Age, achieving political awareness is easier than ever; ironically, we are so surrounded by news that ignoring it can easily feel like a pleasant rebellion. In an age where news, entertainment, propaganda, advertising, and political rhetoric compete aggressively for whichever few moments of attention we have to offer, knowing what is happening is not enough. A responsible citizen ought to take a step further to understand the events and how they affect oneself, one’s neighbors, one’s nation, and even the world as a whole. This requires an ability to distinguish information from persuasion, allegory from information, and reality from allegory. Media literacy allows us to break away from being an uninformed, divided, and easily controllable public.
The Uprising doesn’t demand much of its audience. It takes up much of the obligatory heavy lifting on its audience’s behalf in connecting the events of the past with the pressing issues of today. The responsibility of the audience, then, is to demand more of itself: in recognizing injustice, in questioning authority, and in finding strength in unity instead of seeking to divide ourselves over manufactured social differences.
