Movie: Zootopia

To borrow advice from Nick Wilde, I will ask a question and answer it myself:

How great was this movie? So great.

I didn't know what to expect when I watched Zootopia. I'd planned on watching it a while back because the teaser trailer (the one where they're walking around against a white background) was cute, but I hadn't given it much thought after. I didn't see any other trailers or things like that. So when I finally watched, boy was I surprised.

In following the grand (and recent?) tradition of Disney movies being kid-friendly as well as having deeper ideological advocacies for adults to think about, Zootopia succeeds in making you wonder about our true nature as human beings, while reminding you why everyone loves sloths so much.

Here's why Zootopia works:

It has complex layered characters in the guise of adorable animals. Almost every speaking character in this film isn't one-dimensional and it's great. It's never in a heavy-handed way either - they don't shove the layers in your face; the layers unfold as the story moves along. Lionheart was probably one of the more subtle characters to prove this point, but he was one of the most poignant for me, so I'll go with him. He's not your run-of-the-mill politician who's either totally good or totally bad - he's sleazy, he's some bad things, but his overall intentions weren't totally evil - which is, given his background as a predator (aka the white male US politician coutnerpart), it's about the best you can do, probably.

I also like that they showcased different kinds of stereotypes being broken - you have your vicious predators like Lionheart or Manchas, your meeker predators like Clawhauser, your meek preys like Bellweather, and your aggressive preys like Chief Bogo, and your in-betweens like Judy and Nick. So great. Even Judy seems enlightened in the beginning when she says she knows lots of bunnies who are jerks, and that foxes aren't all bad. Still, she does carry around her Fox Away, precisely because it's ingrained in her head, like most people's, that foxes are bad and not to be trusted. Despite being a minority herself (as a "dumb bunny" and the first bunny cop), she still has problematic opinions, just like all of us.

Even main characters make mistakes. I looooooooved this about the movie. When they arrested Lionheart, it was already somewhat suspicious to me that everything was wrapping up so quickly, but thankfully things just got better in the last act. It's so great that Judy gets it wrong and mistakenly blames biology for what goes on. It's an allusion to the idea that you shouldn't blame yourself for your initial reactions - these are the things society has ingrained in you (sometimes wrongly) as you grew up. For humans, it's the idea that women are weak, that marriage is only for a man and woman, etc. What matters is how to view your initial reaction. Do you agree with it because it's what you've known your whole life? Do you question its validity? Do you immediately disprove it every time you think about it? Your second reaction matters so much more than your initial reaction - and to see Judy see the error of her ways, to apologize to Nick not only for being a bad friend, but for getting it all wrong and making everything worse for so many animals - that's the kind of powerful thing you end up taking home with you as a child.

The villain was pushed to villainy by society. If you look at the movie use Bellweather, it wasn't just to have a fun twist at the end - it was also to show how societal injustices can lead you to (in this case) actual villainous acts. Bellweather did what she did because she felt, in her words, "underestimated, underappreciated," and we saw in the beginning how she was literally shoved to the side, made to work in a boiler room, called names by Lionheart. Those weren't just to put us off from guessing she was the villain - those were to show us why she became a villain, and that's what makes it so great. Agh!

It has hilarious jokes and references. SO. MANY. REFERENCES. To pop culture references with The Godfather and Disney going meta about itself via bootlegs, to having the bootleg seller named "Duke Weasleton," like the red herring in Frozen, to real life references like the DMV (in our case, LTO, and most government agencies) being run by sloths, to jokes about bunnies being good at multiplying. I could go on. These all really made the movie so much more entertaining and hilarious.

It makes you think. I had so many processing questions in my head after watching this movie.

• How do predators view themselves? Are they afraid of reverting back to "savages"?
• When Mrs. Otterton said her husband wasn't "my Emmy" anymore, it made me think: are we only "ourselves" when we are of rational mind? Is someone who's braindead "no longer who they were"?
• How do the movie help us understand social issues like racism, classism, sexism, and so many other -isms in the world? There weren't any characters in the movie complaining about their world being "too politically correct," which is a great first step.
• How does the circle of life work in this movie? 
• Are cockroaches still gross and evil?
• Where are the humans?
• What about evolution?
• Do they have zoos??

That deteriorated weirdly. Haha. In any case, this movie was insane and brilliant and, in my opinion, very important and relevant. Gold stars all around!