“Try Everything, and Succeed” - A Zootopia Review

Hello yet again, everyone.

Although I’m hardly qualified or reimbursed for doing so, I like to write the occasional review for a movie, music album, or video game when I feel I have something important enough to say. A lot of things have happened since the last time I did one, which was for Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie two years ago. A lot has deserved a review to be posted on my journal history, and I’ve been working on a few. However, I feel like I have to put this particular one front and center above the rest.

This, furry ladies and gents, is a review for the most important movie for our kind.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a review for “Zootopia”.

There is a vast multitude of animated movies yet to come this year, perhaps more than any other year before it. As promising as some of these upcoming titles may appear, however, I think we are already looking at the 2017 Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature.
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Oh crap, I still need to do an Oscars journal! Oh well, later.

I would like you to think for a moment of your fursona, your furry persona, if you have one. Picture how you assimilate it into our modern world, hanging out with your friends’ fursonas and the selfie-resembling pictures some furs have made. Picture our fursonas doing their respective occupations, and how they change certain aspects of a normally human-controlled world. Imagine the movie parodies using animal names and furry references.
Got all of that? This whole world that you’ve just imagined, minus a few minor details, IS Zootopia. This film proudly and vividly displays the best furry-dom can be, what I’m sure we’ve all been picturing our entire lives when we imagine our ‘sonas in a modern society. Because of this, I kind of feel like Zootopia-specific fursonas don’t necessarily need to be made. If your ‘sona’s in a modern setting already, it can likely be very easily injected into this world!

I would like to point out that this is a review of only one viewing of the film, which means my opinion has a possibility of changing after later viewings. Also, there will be a few minor spoilers ahead, so just be aware of the danger! ^^;
Now, without further hesitation, let’s jump into this science-fiction buddy-cop furry Disney dramedy!

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The film begins in a small rural town occupied by main protagonist Judy Hopps and her family, where a small school play gives us a brief history we already knew: prey and predators normally don’t get along. However, in this universe, evolution has far surpassed that of our world, and animals have become anthropomorphic and civilized, so now predator and prey can live in peace and anyone can be anything…within reason, that is. A jungle cat can reasonably become a lawyer or an accountant, but it’s unheard of for a bunny to become a police officer. Even so, such is the dream of young Judy, and even though parents and predators alike deter her, she proves early on that she won’t give up on her dream.

Some 15 years later, Judy struggles against the odds in a police academy, where she’s told she’ll never make it over and over again. But, a montage later, Judy is valedictorian of her graduating class and assigned to the main precinct of Zootopia itself. A goodbye and receiving of many fox-repelling gifts later, Judy is off to the promised land of anthropomorphic animal civilization. This scene with Judy’s train arriving and traveling through the entirety of Zootopia is one of the big highlights of the film. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the opening credits scene in the 90s animated film “Cats Don’t Dance”. Those who have seen both movies will probably get where I’m coming from with that statement. There are inspired sections of this new city like Tundra Town and Sahara Square that provide specialized environments for all different kinds of animals, and it allows the movie to use a variety of locales. All in all, Zootopia is HUGE and INCREDIBLY diverse, representing a world- no, a universe that cannot fully be elaborated on with just one 2-hour-long film.

After arriving at the police department, the naysaying continues with Chief Bogo, who starts out Hopps on parking duty while the other predator cops start working a missing persons case involving more than a dozen animals. Going against her current duties, Hopps gets into some interesting situations, one being an inspired chase scene through a micro-sized district for mice and other small creatures. Eventually, however, Judy is given a real chance, but it comes with an ultimatum: find the missing person assigned to her within 48 hours, or resign from the ZPD. Somewhat hesitantly, Judy accepts this deal and gets right to work.

Along the way, Judy encounters a sly fox by the name of Nick Wilde (and his sidekick Finnick, who adds a baby fur moment here in the movie for those who are fans of such things), who throughout the film shatters her negative disposition to foxes, then restores it, then shatters it again. Largely posing as a fox myself, Nick especially caught my attention since the first time seeing him. While he quite obviously holds second candle to Judy in the film, he is also a very well developed and explored character that comes full circle in the end.
About halfway through the film, it is discovered that, while Nick and Judy are on opposite ends of the food chain, they suffered from almost identical social boundaries as children. Judy’s childhood turmoil was shown at the beginning, where she is bullied by the only other fox in the movie aside from Nick, Gideon Gray. Nick’s occurs in a flashback at the moment he spills the beans about his past, and we learn that he was alienated as a kid by a scout group made up of prey animals. It’s a very emotional scene, and I don’t want to forget that Nick makes a cute, Rugrat-voiced kid.

As the movie goes on, the plot goes from a missing persons case to something much deeper and more terrifying when considering the kind of society that has been built. Tension between predator and prey is further heightened, leading to an interesting climax and twist as well as a very satisfying resolution.

I have to say that, for a movie about a civilized society made up of animals, what better serious issue to discuss than the precise amount of civilization within the animals themselves, and just how quickly that civilized demeanor can be withdrawn and a return to savagery can take place? The film explains that, no matter how civilized these animals are, they’re still animals. And this is arguably a KIDS MOVIE! But this is the kind of deep, existential material for a high-end philosophical dystopian fiction film. I can liken it most to the actual issue of mankind slowly and quite possibly losing its intelligence, which terrifies me in real life and distressed me in the film itself when addressed in a different form. The fact that the civilized society in Zootopia hangs on such a thin thread makes you very concerned for the world you’ve just been introduced to. Suddenly innocent things like an animal naturalist/nudist club don’t seem quite so innocent. After filling you with this sense of dread, however, the situation proves stable and easily remedied. The problem can easily resurface, though, which hopefully could mean sequels!

Along with such a serious main issue as the epicenter of the plot, “Zootopia” breaks ground on many other issues that much more “mature” and decorated films would, such as racism (conveyed as speciesism here, but we know what they’re REALLY addressing) and racial stereotypes, political corruption, social awareness, and political correctness.
First off, I will say that furry films like this are practically DESIGNED to combat racism and diversity, as the use of different animals can so easily convey these issues while covering them in such a comfortable and friendly veil. And boy, are they conveyed here. Many of the characters live up to their species stereotypes, but some characters counter them significantly. Predators can be nice, supposedly innocent prey can be evil and dangerous, rabbits can be more than carrot farmers, foxes don’t have to be con artists, and so on. (But everyone who works at the DMV has to be a sloth, he-he.) Many pieces of dialogue convey the prevalent racial/species stereotype issues, such as people thinking Nick can’t be trustworthy just because he’s a fox, when a prey truck driver aggressively tells Nick “better watch where you’re going, FOX”, or when Gideon Gray (the other fox) threatens Judy by saying he’ll do what foxes do best, or something to that effect. These issues are also expressed visually, however, with animals like wolves and polar bears making good security guards and such. It’s not so much racial/species stereotyping as occupational bias for specific species, but still. This isn’t a false anti-racism movie like “Crash”, which only adheres to racial stereotypes and suggests that nothing changes and racial issues continue in the end. “Zootopia” is the real thing.
The political corruption side of things would bring up too many spoilers, so I’ll refrain from elaborating on it in this review. As for social awareness and political correctness, these are generally covered in small comments as well. A prominent one occurs when Judy first enters the police department and Clawhauser calls her “cute”, to which she replies “it’s okay for a bunny to call another bunny cute, but if another species does it…”. I see this as a reference to the LGBT community and how to correctly refer to them, but I could be overthinking it. Also, during the film, Judy describes Nick as “articulate”, which I believe was an adjective used by Joe Biden to uh…“politely” refer to someone. All in all, the writers seemed incredibly aware of WHEN they were making this movie and what to talk about. I’m sure there was so much more to bring up that I may have missed with just one viewing, but I believe I’ve covered enough to make my point.

Now don’t get me wrong, this film has some imperfections to be noted. The most prominent is one that we in the furry community will probably feel the strongest about. For a film that so significantly promotes diversity, the roster of species is not as diverse as it could have been. For example, there are little to no scalies or avians in “Zootopia”. The film seems incredibly biased toward mammals and furred animals, making the world seem a little less in-depth than it should. This can easily be remedied in a sequel that can further expand and elaborate on the world this film has created, but for now it feels a little shallow.
Second, I feel as though I got a slightly wrong impression from the trailers that the film itself didn’t deliver on. To preface that, I have to say that “Zootopia” has had one of the GREATEST ad campaigns of all time. From the first teaser introducing Nick as an anthropomorphic character and explaining some rules of anthropomorphism and Zootopia itself, on to its social media campaign with movie parodies and holiday-themed posts, all the way to its final trailers with selfies…it was all fantastic and incredibly enjoyable. But now the movie is out, and all of these jabs at the little aspects of our society just aren’t really there. Phones are hardly used, no selfies are taken, and aside from one tiny scene with a weasel bootlegger selling movies, there aren’t any prevalent movie parodies. I want to see more of these little things. I wanted a scene like passing a movie theater with a parody title showing on the screen; I wanted to see Zootopia’s social media sites (although I was happy that a Gazelle-themed app was somewhat prevalent); I wanted to see more Zootopia musical artists and street names and more. I feel like the trailers were telling us that these jabs were going to be a somewhat prevalent part of Zootopia’s society, but that wasn’t quite the case. This goes back to my previous statement, though, that Zootopia itself is freaking HUGE and just couldn’t be covered completely in one feature-length film, even if it was a little longer than a normal film of its caliber. The plot and social commentary just took front and center in this film, though, as it should have.

The only shortcomings this film has are tiny nit-picking issues. What it has an abundance of, on the other hand, is its beauty, its personality, its diversity, its social awareness with its time, its own created rules of the world, and oh so much more. If this film is from the same team that brought us “Tangled” and “Frozen”, then this is EASILY my favorite of the three. It is a big movie for Disney and perhaps a much bigger movie for the furry community. This film is a positive example of what we are and just how positive we can be opposite the smut that SOME of us produce. This, in my opinion, is a perfect counter for anything negative that can be said about furries. This is what we want for ourselves, and it is how I feel we would like to be seen and represented. From now on, when people ask us what a furry is, we can tell them to look at “Zootopia”, and they can say in reply “Oh yeah, that movie was cool; being a furry must be cool too”. Then, we can say “indeed it is, indeed it is”.
“Zootopia” has indeed tried everything, and it has most certainly succeeded.

Disney’s “Zootopia” gets a near-flawless 9.9 out of 10.
The smallest of details deny it a perfect score, but they can be easily remedied with a sequel. Fingers crossed for this hopefully-long-running addition to Disney (and furry) history!