After five viewings, I just have to get some of my thoughts out on paper about Zootopia...
Now that the movie is out in the UK, I feel like I can make this post, but just in case I'll try my best to keep the spoilers to the minimum.
I had no idea that this movie was going to be so amazing. I had no idea that this movie was going to be so relevant to the state of our society at this moment in time. I had no idea that Disney would ever- or could ever make an animated film about prejudice, racism, meth labs, affirmative action, the war on drugs, pragmatic police, privilege, xenophobia, sexism, the glass ceiling and government conspiracy. Like… if you had told me nine months ago that that was what this movie was going to be about, I'd never have believed you.
I've seen this movie FIVE times! I'm such a responsible adult, but I have a car and a paycheck. Being an adult doesn't mean you can have ice cream for dinner, it means that you can have ice cream for dinner and no one is going to stop you. To this day, I've never seen any other movie in a theater five times. If I had been old enough to drive myself to a theater back in 1994 (and had a car), I'd probably had done the same thing with The Lion King, but I wasn't even in high school yet, so I only saw TLK once in it's original theatrical run. Honestly, I've not been so "in" to a movie since TLK, but Zootopia has definitely upset that.
This movie, tho. each time I've seen it I've caught something new. I love the personality of the characters. I love that each character is presented in such a way that you can understand them and why they are convicted to act the way they do. The plot is so deep and layered and just… Wow. I always get a kick out of sitting in the back of the theater and watching half the audience jump out of their seats at the two big jump scares. And the twist is just so unexpected. If this movie isn't nominated for all kinds of awards, I'm going to be shocked. I'm already so jazzed that it's beaten Frozen's opening records.
Last June, when I was sitting in a theater with some local friends to see Inside Out, the last thing I expected to see was the teaser trailer that played for Zootopia. Yes, I knew Disney was making this movie, but I had no idea what the final character designs were going to look like, I'd only see a few pieces of concept art. When I saw that trailer, I was like "Did Disney _really_ use the term anthropomorphic in a trailer?" "Did they really make that awful be-fur pun at the end?" Of course this has been seen be-fur, I can name at least a dozen animated movies, (and even a few stop-motion and puppeteered movies) that are strictly an anthro animal cast. The inclusion of both of these things in a trailer was nothing more than a send-up to the furry fandom that they were making a movie we'd probably be interested in it. That was painfully obvious.
I know, I know! Anthropomorphic isn't _our_ word specifically, it's been used for centuries, it's freaking' Latin for crying out loud, but how often do you hear that word used outside the fandom? This was Disney marketing using a buzzword specifically for one purpose. Anyway… I was excited that Disney was making an anthro movie, I dug the character designs, and I was excited, but at the same time cautiously optimistic. I'd made the assumption that if Disney's marketing was lowering themselves to enticing the furry fandom, it was probably not going to be their best movie. Later in the year I affirmed that suspicion when I found that Zootopia is Disney's B-Movie for 2016, with Moana being the A-movie. My hopes for a movie this good just weren't there so I was pleasantly surprised to see just a week before the US release date that it had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 100%.
Over the past decade Disney hasn't really done the A team B team movie production thing, they've mostly been sticking to one animated film a year. Funny enough, The Lion King was also a B-movie back in 1994, with Pocahontas being the A-movie. Back when they were still the right-coast, Orlando animation team and the left-coast Burbank team. We all know how much of an A-move Pocahontas turned out to be. It's not a bad film, but it's no TLK by any stretch. I have a funny suspicion that Zootopia is well poised to upset Moana big time.
Was anyone else as surprised as I am that Disney could make this movie, that this movie is as great as this one is, and that the timing of it is just SO ridiculously perfect? This is the movie the current generation needed, it really is. I hope that it becomes as universally loved ad universally appreciated the way The Lion King has now become 22 years later. Hopefully, 22 years from now Zootopia will have at least had enough of a lasting mark on society to affect some of the issues that it addresses.
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