The Review Part VI: The Editors Should Probably Strike Back
"Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was the most disappointing thing since my son."
- Mr. Plinkett
"Zootopia is definitely better than one of the most despised movies of the last decade!"
-some guy
Since we only had five reviews of the first Zootopia movie, you think not much else could be said about it, but, actually, it's been almost a decade, and Disney movies collect bad faith readings like Flayrah collects Zootopia reviews, and I'd like to address a few of those.
First, starting small, there's the "what do the predators eat?" thing which for some reason you still see bandied about like that's a clever observation, despite the movie's climax hinging the main predator character carrying a snack with him. Turns out, they eat food. Moving on, people like to complain about "copaganda", but, honestly, even if you accept all cops are bad, they have jobs that put them in dramatic situations regularly, so people are going to tell stories about them. That, and I've recently seen complaints that the Godfather parody glorifies criminals, so tie goes to the movie. The big one is the assertion that the main metaphor equates specific races (usually African American or black) with predatory species, when the metaphor is about minorities in general, and the movie does not specifically code most characters racially (though you could possibly argue the lead characters are pretty white-coded). An ironically bad faith defense here is that, when Disney racially codes an animal character, it's very noticeable, though they've mostly cut that out (mostly). Which brings me to the final complaint against Zootopia, which is that it is a Disney movie, and to that, all I can say is, well, nobody's perfect.
Zootopia 2 is the sequel to Zootopia, which makes sense. (The movies are also known as Zootropolis in certain regions, which makes less sense.)
It is directed by returning director Byron Howard, as well as Jared Bush, who was only credited as a co-director on the first movie, and is replacing former full director Rich Moore. The team of Bush and Howard also directed Encanto together, which everyone seems to think is the best movie Disney has put out this decade, though I don't even think it was the best movie Disney put out that year, personally. Bush has also recently been promoted to "chief creative officer" at the studio, so this team is kind of the A-team at Disney at the moment.
Zootopia 2 follows the continuing adventures of rabbit Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and fox Nick Wilde (voiced by Jason Bateman), rookie cops for the ZPD and partners. When they accidentally cause a high speed chase that ends in disaster, they are threatened with being split up. Nick feels like they should just lay low, but Judy begins to suspect she's found evidence of a snake in Zootopia who is planning on stealing the journal of the inventor of the weather controlling technology that allows Zootopia to exist. In hindsight, they are both correct.
The duo soon meet Gary De'Snake (voiced by Ke Huy Quan), who soon convinces Judy that his intentions for the book are not evil. Unfortunately, Judy and Nick get blamed for helping the snake in his heist, and find themselves on the run. They find evidence suggesting that Zootopia's happy facade might be built on a lie. Which is actually also what happens in Disney's 100th Anniversary movie, Wish. Are you trying to tell us something, Disney? (This is also the third movie from Disney this decade where it is revealed a fantasy setting is built on the backs of reptiles, so if I had a nickel for every time that happened, it still wouldn't be a lot, but it would be one more nickel than is usual for this joke format.)
Other important characters include the conspiracy minded beaver, Nibbles Maplestick (voiced by Fortune Feimster), who becomes Nick and Judy's guide to the secret reptile underworld of Zootopia, and lynx Pawbert Lynxley (voiced by Andy Samberg), the black sheep scion of the family that claims to have invented the weather walls of Zootopia, though they seem pretty insistent that nobody actually check up on that. Nick and Judy are seperated at one point, and Nibbles and the duo of Gary and Pawbert become temporary partners to Nick and Judy, respectively.
The partnership of Nick and Judy is the thematic core of the movie, displacing the themes of prejudice from the first movie somewhat. They're still present, especially in the plight of the reptiles of Zootopia, but more emotional beats come from Nick and Judy's relationship this time. It's not a romanctic relationship, yet, but it's still early days. Judy sees Nick's apartment for the first time this movie, after all. A third movie might actually see some more concrete movement in the romance direction (if for no other reason that the filmmakers would have seen The Bad Guys 2 by now and realized, "oh, I guess we can just do that now").
The movie does bring back a lot of characters from the first movie, but it does actually at least justify why certain characters would reappear in certain scenes. Nick needs to get across town really fast, so he calls the speeding sloth. Nick and Judy are wanted fugitives, so of course the mafia don shrew knows how to help. The movie also adds plenty of new minor characters, some more amusing than others. In addition to reptiles, we also meet the aquatic mammals of Zootopia. There are quite a few vocal cameos, by the way. It seems like half of Hollywood voiced some kind of animal at some point for this movie.
The humor is much more referential this time around. Last movie had an extended Godfather parody, as already mentioned, but there are quite a few more bits like that. There was one very specific parody late in the third act that, on one hand, kind of brought everything to a standstill as it played out, but on the other, got the biggest out loud laughter from me in the entire movie. So, tie goes to the movie, again.
All in all, perhaps not as good as the first movie, but then again, when are sequels ever? Still, the best Disney's done since Raya and the Last Dragon.
About the author
2cross2affliction (Brendan Kachel) — read stories — contact (login required)a red fox
New teeth. That's weird.
Comments
I'll probably refrain from reviewing this one, when I reviewed the last one "bad things happened"(TM) that are still lingering about to this day, so best not to bring that genie back out of the bottle.
My husband and I saw it on Saturday. The theatre was actually sold out at the matinee showing. It's a pretty good film, with gorgeous animation. The water looks real. There are a few plot holes, and some retconning, and a couple of scenes that seem to be teasing the Nick-And-Judy shippers. The plot is more coherent and easy to follow this time around. Not as much of the glorious world-building of the first film, though.
The lynxes character designs kept making me think of the Lackadaisy Cats.
My husband liked this one better, I still prefer the first one. However, the theatre was eerily silent, and I mean, no laughing, no nothing, and there were lots of kids present--but more adults than kids. Maybe they all dozed off in the recliners that the theatre had.
I'd recommend it, but I'm looking forward to getting the DVD so I can see all the wealth of background details and easter eggs that went by too fast to register.
Not really a correction, but did add a picture of Pawbert to break up the text a little, at the suggestion of dronon (he suggested adding more art, not particularly Pawbert).
It only registered to me now... but, why is the lynx given a pun first name? All the other characters have normal first names, while saving the animal punning to their last name. It just feels a bit off.
I think because there are four Lynxleys in the movie, so they wanted to distinguish him, and I guess "Pawbert" is a pun on "Robert," but I wonder if it doesn't hint that he's "pawtistic." He's portrayed as socially awkward when Judy first meets him.
I stand by my observation that the lynxes remind me of the Lackadaisy Cats. It's something about the mouths full of human-looking incisors with fangs on the extreme corners, the set of the eyes, the cheek ruffs...I mean, no, it's not a direct rip-off (I hope) but it's similar enough to make me notice it.
I also noticed that the main antagonist is a grim-faced real estate developer in a position of political power, whose daughter and elder son are his chief advisors. He is used to getting what he wants. Probably just imagining things, though.
I need to correct the word "retcon" to "plot inconsistencies." In the first movie, Mr. Big is the guy who runs Tundratown; in this one, it's the Lynxley family, and Mr. Big is afraid of them. Now, okay, I'm probably not seeing the gag that shrews run away from cats, or that Mr. Big is the crime boss while the Lynxleys are the "legitimate" rulers of Tundratown. Whatever.
The joke about Fru Fru being married, pregnant, and now with a toddler, in the stated "one week since the end of the last film's story" is funny because "shrews," but that really plays hell with the life span of Mr. Big. He should be dead by now.
I think I liked the Marsh Market sequence the best, because it presented new concepts. The reptile speakeasy was HILARIOUS.
The part I liked least was the relationship between Nick and Judy. As Nibbles Maplestick said, "Now that's oversharing!" Yeah, they're learning how to work together, having vastly different personalities, but dammit, SOMEBODY GET THAT RABBIT SOME DECAF, STAT!!!!
Pawbert's siblings were Catrick and Kitty, so, yeah, they all had punning first names.
Kitty can be the diminuitive form of Catherine ... which would still be a bit cat punny, but at least it's a real name.
Yeah, that is one of the odder decisions, because all the other characters have "real-world human first name" (Judy, Nick, Benjamin) "silly animal pun second name" (Hopps, Otterton, Bogo, Lionheart, etc., etc.). And the Lynxley's already have that!
The only other characters I can think of where the joke is in the first name are Nibbles (but that feels more like a nickname somehow), Judy's mom Bonnie (which is still a real name) and the only-known-by-his-first-name Jesus, the basilisk lizard who can walk on water. (I mean, he uses the Spanish pronunciation, but you know how you read it.)
There is a vague possibility that "Nick" means "to steal." :D ;)
The name I thought was dumb was Gary De'Snake.
Given he is from the bayou(?) a more cleaver one could have been Gary Sheds
See, this is the kind of nitpicking of movies we need. As soon as I hear the word "plot", my eyes instinctively roll (sorry, it's true), but you point out Gary De'Snake is a stupid name, and I'm like, "yes, that's a good point".
Is mentioning the snake is WAY out of scale a fair point? I mean, most of the film adheres to keeping the characters in scale, and then they bring on this dragon-sized viper...
I can understand that a life-sized viper (forget it's blue) would be too small to make an impression, and an anaconda (which CAN be thirty feet long) wouldn't be poisonous. And that "but you have no problems with clothes-wearing talking animals who drive cars (very badly) and live in a city, huh?"
The movie was inspired by a sketch of a snake in the pose of the "2" in the title, so they had to build the story around a snake character. I just feel that the snake the weakest part of the story.
I mean, they make a big deal about him being an ectotherm, and then when it becomes inconvenient to the plot (roll those eyes, Crossie!) they give Gary a scarf (snatched from a Coca-Cola-drinking polar bear) and he is OK for the rest of the story, slithering around in the cold with nary a shiver. C'mon. Snakes don't produce their own heat, so a scarf would be useless.
And the anteater's name is "Antony."
Going to turn this into my Oscar predictions comment section until this cycle's over, so I don't have to keep necro-bumping the ranking article whenever I get bored or whatever.
Since this is the Zootopia 2 review, I guess we'll start with its chances. I mean, it's going to be the first Disney nominee since 2021, that's happening. But right now it's the underdog to win Best Animated Feature (which isn't the worst position to be in, actually, but more on that later). Its biggest weakness is still its biggest weakness; sequel. Toy Story 3 won because it was the first Toy Story movie to come out when the Animated Feature Oscar movie existed (and had Best Picture nomination); Toy Story 4 came out in a year when all five nominees were strong, which unfortunately meant nothing really coalesced around a single challenger, splitting votes, and causing the Academy to go back to Pixar, their default last decade. (Alternatively, the Academy uniquely likes Toy Story movies; we'll see how next year goes for Toy Story 5.)
It also didn't quite nail the critical consensus the way the first Zootopia did; I'm going to steal and butcher a line from someone else here, but the truth is Illumination, say, would sacrifice all the minions in a giant Wicker Man if they thought it would give them reviews like Zootopia 2's (and it was also physically possible), but low 90s on the Tomatometer (it's hovering around 91/92%) after the first one's run at 100% feels disappointing (it also has a lower MetaCritic score). Call it the revenge of Moana, which had a stellar high 90s RT finish, but still felt like the critical disappointment of 2016 because it came out in the shadow of Zootopia. More importantly, it does trail Kpop Demon Hunters on both RT and MC. It feels like it did exactly what it needed to do to stay in contention for a win, and not a jot more, which means it didn't do enough in this area.
On the positive side, it is one of the box office stories of the year; unlike the first Zootopia, which kind of sauntered it's way to a billion, slowly but surely, during a slower box office time frame and after Batman v Superman cleared the competition while also kind of flopping itself, Zootopia 2 blitzed to the billion mark (I've seen reports it's already there, but that seems a bit premature; Box Office Mojo has it at 915 million, though) during an active theater window with some fierce competition in Wicked for Good, which arguably was even gunning for a similar audience. Furthermore, it still has the Christmas holiday plus that long stretch of January/February where it will basically be the main family movie until GOAT comes out. So, that will at least give it some attention throughout the Oscar season.
Kpop Demon Hunters is still very much the frontrunner, which is kind of a precarious place to be. That might be it's biggest disadvantage, actually. Sometimes, the Academy just gets bored with frontrunners. And the last two winners in the category, The Boy and the Heron and Flow, were actually come from behind upsets. Then again, the Animated Feature award seems slightly less likely to do this than a lot of other categories at the Oscars, the last two years notwithstanding. For a lot of the 2010s, you could predict the winner in March and still be correct next March at the ceremony. Also, even when Disney is the "underdog", I mean it's never really the underdog in this category, is it?
What may be Kpop's biggest weakness, however, is the fact that it's a Netflix movie. This didn't really hurt Pinocchio three years ago, but three years ago, Netflix was in the middle of acquiring Warner Bros., reminding Academy voters, oh, yeah, wait a minuter, I hate Netflix. Netflix has never won Best Picture; the closest it came was The Power of the Dog, but then the Academy went out of its way to throw the award to CODA at the last minute. See, Netflix is pretty openly trying to destroy the theatrical experience in favor of streaming, and Hollywood isn't down with that. If it gets ugly, Kpop could lose votes just for being a Netflix movie (even if it's really more of a Sony movie). Even before the merger, James Cameron was writing trade opinion pieces saying streaming movies should not qualify for the Oscars, and was getting some attention; I would not be surprised if there are rule changes coming up for streaming movie qualifications, though they won't happen this year. (However, Cameron did kind of go out of his way to say, "Oh, yeah, but that Kpop movie was kind of good." so perhaps more neutral for it specifically.) Kpop did already fail to qualify for the BAFTAs, the British equivalent of the Oscars, which is a pretty major precursor award. At the very least, the streaming status means its not exactly got the box office stats of Zootopia 2.
But, it's still the frontrunner and the smart money. It had far and away the most critics' group awards for the category (at least so far), including most of the major ones. Critics don't vote for the Oscars, but a consistent pick does show that, well, people pick it consistently. Also, it seems to be the one animated movie guaranteed to have a second nomination, with "Golden" for Best Song; it could even win that award, making it my beta noir in two categories, as, yes, I still want Zootopia 2 to win, and I am also rooting for Sinners' "I Lied To You" in Song.
My completely made up statistics say 60% Kpop wins (and that's probably conservative), 30% Zootopia 2.
The other 10% would probably be Arco, the animated movie that played Cannes Film Festival this summer. That festival is surprisingly important to this category. Did you know Shrek played Cannes, in competition? Really! Arco's been compared to last year's Flow, but Flow had three things Arco didn't; Flow actually was in competition at Cannes last year, while Arco wasn't, Flow always had the possibility of making the International Feature category, then did, while Arco wasn't even submitted, and, something I haven't seen a lot of pundits talk about but is kind of obvious, Flow hit streaming the same week Oscar voting started, which ... I guess could still happen for Arco. But I just don't think Arco is Flow; it's best chance is that Netflix hate/frontrunner fatigue finally catches up to Kpop, but voters also aren't feeling "Disney sequel" right now, either, and it becomes the compromise winner. It will probably win the BAFTA (the first Zootopia lost to Kubo and the Two Strings, so there's no reason to think Zootopia 2 will win), which may give it a boost right in the middle of Oscar voting, as well.
One major area of concern for Arco, though, is that it isn't consistently winning critics' groups awards that aren't going to Kpop, with other smaller movies snatching it. Little Amelie or the Character of Rain has won at least one award, and it seems to be the other, smaller movie spot for the Oscar nominations. The safe spot that isn't actually in contention to win, it's just an honor to be nominated if you will. Surprisingly, Elio, from Pixar, is just hanging on by a thread. I would be surprised to see Pixar miss, but not too surprised. It's even a much better movie than, say, Elemental or Onward, for instance. But after dominating the first two decades of the category, people just seem bored with Pixar (cue up that scene from Toy Story 2, you know the one). Still, haven't missed nomination since 2016 (when they just didn't have a movie out), so probably safe. The other options are Netflix's In Your Dreams, but that has all the baggage of Kpop with none of the pop cultural phenomenom bonus, and Gold Derby voters were really high on something called Scarlet for a while, but that seems to have been a weird "herding" instinct there rather than a legitimate contender.
One thing that just hasn't happened this year is that none of the contenders have even gotten a whisper of Best Picture possibility; the last three years at least had that with Pinocchio being generally considered to have been 11th place, while Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and The Boy and the Heron seemed to have canceled each other out. The Wild Robot had obvious Best Picture nomination aspirations, but that's as far as it went. Okay, I did see some "what about Kpop?" articles when "Golden" was first taking off, but the articles all had a tone of "haha, that's cute, but no." Kind of a weak year.
Next year looks much stronger, with original Disney (Hexed), original DreamWorks (Forgotten Island), original Sony (GOAT), original Pixar and Toy Story sequel (Hoppers, Toy Story 5) and never-not-nominated LAIKA's return after 7 years absence (Wildwood), and that's just the big boys.
Of course, Avatar 3 will win the Ursa Major.
Obviously.
Does anybody know what's going on with the Ursa Majors/ALAA? The site's been silent and dead for about a year now, since the leadership roles changed and the folks who had been running it retired.
I can't seem to find any information anywhere.
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