Film Review: Zootopia
I had the chance to see Zootopia earlier than its wide release this Thursday and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.
There might be a few spoilers throughout this, so if you plan on seeing the movie, or don’t want to have it ruined, come back after watching the movie.
I tend to like movies (& animated movies) that have a great way to develop characters as well as a great underlying meaning.
What I enjoyed the most about the characters was how they each had a unique personality. Some traits are exaggerated in the way that we’ve come to know a certain animal (or the complete opposite): sly like a fox (Our first encounter with Nick is one that tries to bring sympathy but we quickly learn about his scam of taking a large popsicle, melting it down, creating smaller ‘pawpsickles’ selling them to hamsters, then selling the sticks to a small construction worker, followed by Judy confronting Nick, only to leave Judy in drying cement while Nick walks away untarnished), an elephant remembers everything (in the movie, the elephant that is sought for information on Judy’s first real case remembers nothing when probed about a missing citizen), slow as a sloth (one of the most memorable scenes from the commercial), and others that aren’t as common, i.e. if you personified a rhino, they are probably brute in nature, probably a bit mean. You would expect that a sheep is more timid, and you would expect a mouse to be weak, but Mr. Big (a mouse) has formed a sort of mafia.
Each scene in the movie either builds up a person’s character, or serves to tie the plot line together by providing Judy with clues to piece together the puzzle.
While building the characters, there’s a certain ‘humanity’ that is present and makes each character relatable. The behaviors the characters have throughout the movie largely parallel real world scenarios and situations. Judy’s first role as a meter maid, and her drive to hit 200 tickets by noon represents all the times that the underdog in a real world situation makes it a point to go above and beyond to show their potential. While she’s the ‘joke’ for being such a small ‘prey’ animal (prey vs predator plays a huge role in the movie), her character is always giving it her all and never giving up, even to a fault (admitting to a mob boss that she’s a cop, trying to give a press conference briefing while not fully thinking about what she’s saying, and almost nearly giving up on the case despite not hitting the 48 hour mark she was given to solve it).
Her boss starts out annoyed with her presence and almost shrugs it off as just part of some initiative to be more inclusive. However, he comes around by the end of the movie and shows how much respect he has for her as a police officer. Throughout the whole movie, he’s completely unaware at how shifty the mayor and assistant mayor are. He’s willing to take orders and uphold justice, but he himself doesn’t fully understand what’s going on around him.
At some point in time, when the Mayor is involved with the disappearance of many animals, we get our first major dose of real-world reality. Those in power caring about their image at all costs, to the point of doing illegal activities (animals kept against their will). The mayor was falling into a trap being built by the assistant mayor (sabotage, something those jealous of those in power tend to do), all while the entire police staff had no idea that they were merely pawns in a larger battle. The media is all too eager to jump to conclusions and corner Judy into repeating what she heard only briefly when the mayor was revealed.
There are many other examples of how humans behave as portrayed through the various animals, but I find it interesting in how the pivotal moment of the movie where Judy finds redemption, is when she realizes that everyone has evolved to the current point, that the flight response of running away is really just biology, and that there’s something underhanded about what was going on with the animals in captivity.
Gideon is one of the first foxes introduced in the movie. He’s the local bully that gets his way because he’s bigger and a predator. We see Judy’s first act of bravery early on when she tries to get tickets back for those that are too frightened of Gideon. The next time we see him, he has matured, and turned into the local pie baker that even Judy’s parents adore by the later parts of the movie.
The pivotal scene is when Judy’s parents say they approached Gideon when they saw how fearless Judy was. Her parents’ feelings of fear changed to comfort demonstrate how surmounting fear itself is evolutionary. Empathy, understanding, and care are all traits that are uniquely human, but at the same time evolutionary as the fight or flight responses of our DNA would have us simply do that. Judy realizes some version of this and it really hits home when she realizes the flowers are called night-howlers and that her relative had gone ‘savage’ and bit her mom. When she realizes how equal everyone is in the evolved present, she realizes the mistakes she’s made and seeks justice.
The movie has many other tones, emotions, sub-plots, and unique items worth discussing, but I think the most powerful message is felt when Judy realizes what’s going on and what evolved truly means.
If we take away everything that sets us apart, we are left with whatever we define as human.
There are many posts on Facebook about ‘God’ and religion being taken out of schools and how this is the cause of student rebellion.
There are posts about how sensitive the world has become, about how unfair the world is but we should judge those who have it worse.
All of these posts fail to realize that we have evolved to a point where we not only can articulate what is wrong with the world, but anyone can do it, and that you don’t need to be at the point of being ‘in power’ to try and start some change.
Beyond this, a religion does not a good person make. We are predisposed to thinking this because we like to tell ourselves that we know what is right, but when we remove religion from the discussion and our humanity is all that’s left to speak for us, those that do good, speak good, and make the world better will do so regardless of what their religion tells them.
In the absence of religion is where the most fundamental moral compass guides. If you need a religion to calibrate the compass, the compass was flawed to begin with.
