titsay
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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will byers stan first human second
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
One Nice Bug Per Day
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
trying on a metaphor
Xuebing Du
d e v o n
Stranger Things
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Jules of Nature
Discoholic 🪩
Sade Olutola
if i look back, i am lost
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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ellievsbear
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@notjawie
On the Nasa livestream of the Artemis mission, one of the astronauts just pointed out that they can see the moon out one window and the earth out another and the scale difference is crazy. Mission control replied: "Amaze, amaze, amaze."
it's so wild to me that you absolutely cannot force a hyperfixation to happen. like you'll watch the most perfectly tailor-made-for-you content that everyone says you'll love and feel absolutely nothing, and then the thing you watch on a whim to fill time will reach through the screen and put its damn fingers in your brain and start rearranging the neurons right in front of you and every single time you're like THIS??? THIS??????? and this happens like every 6-12 months forever
whatever i was gonna say can't possibly be funnier than the mere existence of this draft
“I’d kill for you. Please ask me to kill for you.” “No.” Is a top tier ship dynamic no I do not take criticism
The idea of a person being capable of incredibly immoral acts but held in check but their love of their partner sends me every time
yes
pairs well with this one
I also think that all the "um okay knives out & glass onion were good. Wrap it up now" posts are so funny. You're tripping if you think there's not going to be at least five Benoit Blanc films lol
What part of "the detective franchise is back babey" did you not get. There were 14 Poirot films and that's not counting the show which was a standard season for most of its run. 69 Columbo episodes. Like it or hate it you are going to be seeing Benoit Blanc until the day he stops making money and then some.
He hasn't even been on a train yet for fucks sake
HE HASN'T EVEN BEEN ON A TRAIN YET!!!!
school uniform codes extending to what colours you’re allowed to dye your hair, and what piercings you can have and stuff is so crazy. you HAVE to go to school and you’re not even allowed to have pink hair or pierce your nose about it????
“oh it’s to prepare you for the workplace” okay. i don’t think any workplace should be dictating what you can and can’t do with your body either and i think it’s strange to decide to teach children that their body is not their own
One time I was leaving a friend's place and an older lady with basically no English came up to me and communicated that she was very cold and needed a ride. She pointed to tell me where to go.
I got there and her daughter or granddaughter came out and was like omg her phone died we were worried
And then the older lady said something and the younger lady translated.
"She knew she could trust you because you have pink hair"
I thought it was funny at the time. But when I think back on it I think she was basically saying "you had a visible sign of not vibing with the system I was afraid of"
Be weird. Be colorful. Help random people.
the grinch is fucked up right. he was created specifically as a critique of the commercialization of christmas, but now all his edge has been sanded off. now he's a generic mascot for "hates christmas," which is great to have because the commercialization of christmas has become so overbearing that that's a demographic you can market to! and now he's just part of the Christmas Fold. he's santa's edgier joker counterpart. he has become the very thing he sought to destroy. back in november i checked out a customer with a $1100 order and most of it was grinch merchandise
the desire to engage in my hobbies leaving my body as soon as I have the day off even though I was looking forward to it all week
Even the thrift shops are filled with fast fashion now
Tell me every reason you enjoy Zootopia enough to give it all the rewatches you do.
Every? Oh boy.
Good Story
Perfect Characters
Visual Appeal
Earnestness
Let me break it down.
1. Good Story
Zootopia’s main point is: “Try to make the world a better place by realizing we’re fundamentally the same.”
That’s a really good main point.
It has the benefit of being true. Right now our culture is super into “self-identification,” and this crazy contrast between, “I want to be able to identify as something special” and “Now that I know what categories I fit in, I can choose who’s ‘one of us’ and who’s ’not one of us.’” Okay well that sounds pretty and I’m sure it fulfills some emotional need at some point, but it’s actually super divisive, and self-serving, and it’s the seeds for all prejudices. Including racism.
Do we have differences in origins and experiences? Yes. Of course. Do we also have some fundamental things in common? Yes. Of course. Which truth are you going to give the highest priority to? If it’s “no, I’m a prey animal, I know exactly where I belong, that’s who I am, that’s how I dress, that’s my compass for how I interact with others” then you’re getting all your security from your “sense of self,” and being able to understand what that is…which is just a fancy way of saying “I’m all about me. My own perspective informs everything I do.”
Anyway. Zootopia’s message was super true.
And the coolest thing about it is that if only Judy were in the wrong, and the other half of the dynamic duo, Nick, was this open-minded, un-prejudiced guy…and she just hurts him and has to apologize…the movie’s message wouldn’t be as well-communicated.
They have their prejudices and their hurt-from-being-prejudiced-against in common!
They’re the same…because they’ve both felt what it’s like to be treated like they’re not “the same.”
Nick isn’t the only character being mistreated and written off because of his species. The whole first half of the movie is about Judy being mistreated and written off. They think she can’t be a cop because she’s little and cute and a prey-animal. They think Nick can’t be trustworthy because he’s sneaky and small and a predator.
So literally…if Judy represented one race, and Nick represented a completely different race…the movie would be saying that both those races are discriminated against. They even have discrimination in common. AND, if Nick represented men who people make assumptions about because he’s a man, and Judy represented women who people make assumptions about because she’s a woman—the movie would be saying that both those genders are falsely judged.
I mean. Wow. Right now, your movie is either pro-woman or pro-man. Right now, your movie is either BLM or white-supremacy. Everybody’s lining up on one side of the line or the other. Zootopia says, “it doesn’t matter what character you’re looking at, from the elephant that can’t remember anything to the two main characters—every single one of them has fundamental things in common, and one of those things is that they all live like they’re in their own special category. When actually, they’re all fundamentally the same.”
I don’t want to keep beating the dead horse. But I have a post somewhere that lists every background character and points out that each animal is the exact opposite of what you would assume they are based on their animal-stereotype. The otters are never shown being playful or snuggly, only traumatized and ferocious. The cheetah is fat and slow, not quick or even quick on the uptake. Etc.
Even if you look outside of characters—look at the sets. Look at the environments. The whole city is designed “for animals, by animals.” But it’s in neat little segments. The animals organize themselves by habitat. Of course, in one sense that’s practical—the polar bears can’t live in Sahara Square, etc. but the point is, by making Judy and Nick, the main characters, small animals, in a city where everything is built to accommodate by species—UGH this is so good—they have to figure out how to problem-solve in situations that weren’t made to accommodate them.
Little Rodentia? Judy has to avoid stepping on all the mice or knocking over their buildings. Parking tickets? She has to figure out how to jump to reach bigger animals’ windshields—or she inconveniences smaller animals because the tickets are all printed at the exact same size. Stuck in a cell? The guards didn’t think about the fact that small animals can fit down the pipes made to accommodate big animals.
Zootopia is a city advertised to be where all the animals can come together. But the way they do that is by trying to accommodate every species’ preferences. So then actually while they try to come together, everything from their cars to their districts remind them of their differences. The whole idea is that they prioritize the wrong truths. Yeah, mice can’t drive giraffe cars—but they still have “driving” in common. See?
And oh my word. Initially it was supposed to be a spy story. But they changed it to a buddy cop story. Why? Well because justice doesn’t discriminate. Or at least, it’s not supposed to. So then there’s another lens to look at the story’s main theme through.
It’s just that every layer, every perspective you look at the movie from, is just hammering that truth into you: “Try to make the world a better place by realizing we’re fundamentally the same.”
2. Perfect Characters
Every character is so well-thought-through in this movie, even the side characters. You get the feeling you could watch a whole movie based on the side characters, because that’s the amount of love and nuance built into them.
Look at the main ones, though. Bellwhether is supposed to be soft and a follower. She’s a sheep. Instead, she’s hard and bitter—and she’s a leader. A villainous leader, but a leader, nonetheless. Even as she tries to keep animals divided based on fear of their stereotypes, she’s not fitting her own stereotype. Her voice actress has this strained, half-hoarse, but sweet voice. Like you can tell that this character has spent a lot of time under pressure and trying to manage appearances. Appearing like she’s fine, and she can handle it—until you realize that the appearance she’s really managing is “the cultural fear-based identify of the city.” They dress her in plaid and flowers and she’s a farm animal, because that’s the kind of character Judy would be most likely to trust. But she still has green eyes, and jagged teeth, so that when she does start making evil expressions there are some caricature-pieces in there that come out and accentuate that.
Nick Wilde—everybody’s favorite—is supposed to be sly and smooth and shifty. And he is. He’s a fox. But he’s also brave, helpful, and trustworthy. The first time you see him is when he’s dodging out of the way of a bigger animal ignoring him and about to run him over. Well, that’s important.
Because Judy knows what it’s like to have to get out of the way of larger animals, because they overlook her.
So right off the bat, this character she has to get along with and work with, this character who furthers her development and nails the main point, is introduced in a way that has something in common with her. But he’s also introduced in a way that gives her an opportunity to focus on a different truth—that he is different from her. Because the sheep is yelling that he’s a “fox.” Right away, we’re back to species-as-identification.
And that’s what the movie does, all the way through. It presents new animal characters, and with those new animals characters, more than one thing is true at a time. And Judy has to try to focus on which truth is more important. “Try to make the world a better place by realizing we’re all the same.” Yes, Nick is a criminal. But Nick is also brave, helpful, and eventually, becomes trustworthy.
Judy, too. Judy is an incredibly well-done character. Because she believes, in her head, that anyone can be anything—which is not what the movie ends on. In fact, she goes from saying, “anyone can be anything,” to saying, “we all have limitations.” It’s not true that a fox can be an elephant. But it is true that a fox can be trustworthy. Figure out what’s true, and try to make decisions for the better, based on that.
I could talk about character design and acting. Ginnifer Goodwin gives just the right amount of smugness and self-confidence to Judy without making her unlikeable—you don’t realize she’s smug and her self-confidence is misplaced until she does, when she fails to make the world a better place for Nick.
Judy wears tight, actionable, well-fitting uniforms for the whole movie. In her civilian clothes when she comes to Zootopia, she’s wearing athletic t-shirts and shorts. Ready for action, that’s Judy, even in her civvies. Meanwhile, Nick? Nick wears loose-fitting clothes. Loud, patterned clothes that don’t match. Like he didn’t even what, ladies and gentlemen? Like he didn’t even TRY. “Try to make the world a better place…”
Because when you meet Nick Wilde, he’s long since given up on trying, in life. So his character design reflects that. He rarely even stands up straight, or opens his eyes all the way—his default is drooping. And guess what?
When Judy “gives up?” Quits her job? Goes back home? Stops trying? Her civvies aren’t ready-for-action, trying clothes. They’re loose flannels. And her “ears are droopy.”
SERIOUSLY, you can find things like this in every corner of the movie. For every character. Not one character is a throwaway, not in voice acting, not in design, not in animation, and not in narrative.
3. Visual Appeal
Which leads me into this point—no other animated anthropomorphic animal movie is as visually appealing as Zootopia.
What Zootopia does is it matches the best of the best anthropomorphic animal designs from past Disney movies:
And they marry it with this incredible intentionality with modern CGI.
Did you know Disney invents its own software for things like fur textures?
The sheep’s wool, the velvet pig skin, the fox fur, the bunny fluff—it’s all completely different textures. There’s no one “fur” covering all the hairy mammals.
Nick isn’t just orange. He’s orange with deep red and dark tufts. Judy has black tips to her ears, too—which helps the two of them look like, in some sense, they belong “together” in every shot.
It’s so important to the movie that the animals feel like animals that they worked this hard to do this. And then that extends to the textures of the snow, the ice, the sand, the wet leaves, the grass, the fire.
Every character moves like their animal, and like themselves. Nick and Gideon are both foxes, but they don’t move similarly at all. Gideon is aggressive and glowering and physical. Nick, again, is slouchy, leans on everything, completely non-confrontational.
Other anthropomorphic animal movies like Sing or Puss in Boots—they’re not doing both as well. Zootopia is appealing, without sacrificing realism completely, and without cutting character acting.
The lighting. Nope. This post is too long, I can’t talk any more.
4. Earnestness
There is no disingenuous moment in this movie.
The animators are never lazy. They always go for the challenge. They don’t cut corners. Have you ever seen “Over the Hedge?” I like Over the Hedge. But I watched it recently and it’s crazy how many shots are strategically placed so that the animators don’t have to solve a certain effects problem.
For example, when RJ sprays Hammy with cool whip to make it look like he has rabies? He doesn’t. You never see the cool whip leave the can. It just cuts away, then cuts back when RJ is pulling the can away from his face. The shots are also cut so that you never have to see gas actually come out of Stella—and you never see Vern’s full body as he gets back into his shell, just the upper part of the shell as he wiggles it around, going through the motions of putting it back on.
That’s because that stuff would be painstaking to animate. Any time one character has to interact with props or substances (especially liquids) that are not part of their model, it’s harder on the animator.
Zootopia? We’re getting full-on views of characters getting wet, fur and all, characters touching various objects and elements, foam coming out of the mouth, new clothes, new set pieces, multiple models, huge crowd shots of different animals in different outfits, all with their own movement patterns and acting.
And all that hard work and effort, aimed so totally at the main theme of the movie? Making sure it looks as good as it can? Not just that, but the way it’s written, the acting, is so genuine. They don’t hold anything back. They don’t shy away from real emotion.
Judy Hopps’ apology scene is brutal. She’s crying, having a hard time finishing a sentence, her voice is all tight. It’s not pretty, it’s not romantic, it’s like…ugly crying. And her character is wrong in a super embarrassing way. They're not afraid to go there. The writers, the actors, the animators—they’re not afraid of being too vulnerable with these character flaws.
So many movies, especially kids’ movies today—they just pull up and shy away from being real through their characters. They think a quick sad facial expression will get the point across. And it does. The audience gets that the character feels sad about whatever the circumstance of the scene is. But not as powerfully. Because you didn’t put as much work and heart into it.
Zootopia is all heart, from work ethic to vulnerability to the filmmakers enjoying what they’re doing, enough to make it as good as it can possibly be. I can’t explain it better, other than to say, you feel like they would’ve been happy making this movie much much longer than it was. You feel like they’re cramming every bit of joy and passsion into every little joke, every side character, every hair on a CGI bear.
There you go. Long post, you did ask for it
Sorry for reblogging my own answer but ZOOTOPIA 2 IS NOT BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL.
Look at the original. Look at how hard they worked and everything they did right. Now tell me how Zootopia 2 surpassed, or oh my gosh LET’S JUST SAY IT, measured up, to the first one?
2016:
ZOOTOPIA (2016):
2025:
ZOOTOPIA 2 (2025):
Did anyone else notice this parallel? The first time Nick had a flashlight shined in his face, it was then followed by a traumatic event - He was lured in, assaulted, & then muzzled by a group of mammals he thought he could trust. The trauma still affects him well into adulthood. But when Judy shines her light on him after he cracks a bad joke, his grimace is accompanied by a smile, as Judy has already proven herself to be someone he can trust, who wouldn't hurt him the way others have. It's like Judy is slowly healing the emotional wounds that had been left behind by such a painful experience, & she's replacing the bad memories with happier ones ♥
In love with this little sequence in the storyboards… Nick especially looks so cutesy,,
b a b y
Platonic my ass this is the same picture
It's always "I love you" and never "Okay, I don't care that we're different. What I care about is you. I care about you. Okay? And I didn't say it. I should've said it. But I didn't. Because... well, 'cause I am an emotionally insecure source of your discomfot who is not good at expressing his feelings. Probably because I've been on my own my whole life. And it's not an excuse, it's just- it's why instead of telling you that you're the best thing that ever happened to me, I make jokes about your ears and I tell you that you try too hard. When, you know, the truth is, I just don't want you to get hurt because... because no one else in the world matters more to me than you do."
