Movies & TV

Only to continue operating under the same capitalist system they were under before.

We actually don't really know what system they go to at the end. The reason I mentioned honex specifically is because that word is never said again after the first 20 minutes or so, the movie is just not interested in the inner structure of the hive. Yes, the hive is portrayed as this hellish, rigid, capitalist system, but all that is at least somewhat called into question with few things that happen in the movie. Barry is not supposed to go outside the hive, but he does and it doesn't really matter, then he talks to a human and that's also fine with the movie. You'd think that this honex monopoly would have some influence on the hive, but after the bees get their honey back, they simply stop working, implying that they really work this hard to survive, not to make profit for some corporation. The movie treats the inhumane (inbeeish?) system inside the hive more as an extension of the outer system, once the exploitaition of bees by humans ends, the hive's hellish system disappears with it.

In a very general sense, it portrayed the bees getting to enjoy the fruits of their labor as a bad thing

That interpretation again ignores the ending of the movie, where bees do enjoy the fruits of their labor and it is seen as a good thing. Barry does say that he made a mistake at one point, but last scene he is getting ready to do the same thing again, this time helping to free cows, so it reads to me more that you need a plan for what to do after the revolution and that making mistakes doesn't mean you should go back to the way things were.

I find this movie really interesting, because they clearly wanted to do the whole "changing the system is bad" thing, but, at least to me, they failed miserably and instead made quite a pro-revolutionary story.