“The moral lesson of the movie isn’t that we should tolerate other cultures or that we are all the same under the skin. Instead, it’s that we should be suspicious of Ausländers and that some groups are simply enemies, full stop…
It’s hard to avoid the idea the movie is simply a giant metaphor for the European refugee crisis. A spoiled island of happy birds doesn’t recognize the threat of interlopers. The island (Europe) is supposedly protected by a giant eagle (America), but the eagle is fat, lazy, and disconnected from what’s going on. The pigs (perhaps a deliberate insult to Muslims?) are lecherous, seem to be all male, and also arrive with tons of explosives. And King Mudbeard is sporting a very Arab looking beard.
Red, the suspicious right winger, is persecuted by his own leaders and told “no one cares about your opinion” by the other birds, who are eager to welcome the refugees and party with them. The pigs lounge around the birds’ island, even breaking into people’s houses and using their stuff. No one in charge seems upset.
But though they arrive asking for mercy and tolerance, the pigs end up using terrorism and mockingly thank the birds for their ‘hospitality’ as they flee with the eggs. The West, uh, the birds and the eagle, only reclaim their future through militant action, reclaiming their identity through combat. In a “blink and you miss it” moment, there’s even a Coexist sticker on the van one of the birds drives, with the peace sign turned into a pig’s nose and the Star of David rendered as a knife and fork. And this is the van a bird has to drive into Piggy Island to save some of his friends.”