Andrew Garfield has a message for billionaires: watch my new movie and be afraid. The actor, who stars in Paul Greengrass’s historical drama The Uprising, recently said during a Q&A that he hopes the film makes the ultra-wealthy “scared s**tless”. And honestly, that’s the kind of unhinged promotional energy we need more of.
The Uprising is set during the 14th century and follows a group of peasants rebelling against the crushing inequality of their time. The parallels to 2026 are not subtle, and Garfield is not pretending they are. During the Q&A, he described the film as a “Rorschach test” and said that while he hopes audiences sympathize with the rebels, his real target is the people at the top. “I hope they’re scared s**tless,” he said, which is either the most honest thing an actor has said on a press tour in years or a brilliantly calculated soundbite. Probably both.
Garfield has been doing this kind of thing for a while now. He’s not just an actor; he’s a guy who genuinely seems to care about the themes of the movies he’s in, which is either refreshing or exhausting depending on how cynical you’re feeling. With The Uprising, he’s leaning into the “art as activism” thing hard. The film is about justice, inequality, and the abuse of power, which are all topics that are extremely relevant and also extremely easy to talk about in vague, noncommittal ways. Garfield is not being vague. He’s naming names. Well, he’s naming a class of people.
The Q&A also revealed that Garfield sees the film as a “rallying cry” for people who are sick of the status quo. He’s said he has faith in humanity and that people will eventually “forge a path for a brighter future”. That’s a lot of optimism for a movie about medieval peasants getting slaughtered. But Garfield has always been a bit of an idealist, and The Uprising seems designed to channel that idealism into something that feels urgent rather than preachy.
What’s interesting about The Uprising is that it’s not a documentary. It’s a historical drama that uses the past as a mirror for the present. The 14th-century setting gives the film a kind of distance that makes its political messages easier to swallow, but Garfield and Greengrass aren’t interested in distance. They’re interested in discomfort. The Uprising wants you to leave the theater angry, and maybe a little scared. If you’re a billionaire, Garfield wants you to leave the theater terrified.
The Uprising is in theaters now. Whether it actually changes any billionaire minds remains to be seen.
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