Review: Zootopia

By: SKYLER JONES-BOXWELL

Anthropomorphic animals have been a major part of Disney since the first animation of Mickey Mouse, so it is unsurprising Disney’s latest movie would follow that tradition. Zootopia, Disney’s most recent animal based movie, managed to break box office records with an opening night of $75.1 million dollars, beating the previous highest grossing movie Frozen. With the film’s premise being animals acting like humans in a modern day society, Zootopia follows Judy Hopps, a bunny trying to become a cop in a world with much prejudice for animals fulfilling their designated roles. Zootopia’s relation to current issues on society’s expectations and its moral of overcoming opposition made it a heartwarming movie deserving of praise.

The movie deals heavily with the concept of discrimination and the pressure to conform to an individual’s role in society. In Zootopia, animals are said to have moved beyond their savage ways of predator-prey relationships, and live in harmony in a world where “anyone can be anything.” Unfortunately, the view proves to be heavily idealistic, and it is present throughout the film that prey animals receive heavy disdain for performing jobs deemed too “dangerous”, such as the main character Judy Hopps and her attempts to become the first bunny police officer. Her first job while on duty is parking duty due to being underestimated as the “token bunny”, and defecting from her post to arrest a thief almost gets her fired. In contrast, predators are looked upon by prey as individuals to be feared, with the lingering assumptions that predators will revert back to their “savage” ways of before. Nick Wilde, the con artist fox assisting Judy Hopps throughout the film, mentions that as a child he was bullied by prey animals for attempting to join the boy scouts as their first predator, and so resolved himself to become a criminal because he believes he’ll never be seen as anything else.

This ever present narrow-mindedness is reflected admirably in the film’s main characters, showing that even with the best intentions and your own views on how the world works, you can still end up hurting those around you. A criminal predator can show disdain for prey animals trying to be anything else other than what society says they are, likewise a good natured cop can call predators savage but then turn around and say not all predators are like “them”. Fortunately, Zootopia employs a moral that many people today could stand to learn; people can be forgiven and learn from their mistakes. They can realize the hurt they may cause others with their views and make the effort to change. It is recognizing those flaws are there and that the world is not a perfect utopia free of injustice that is the first step to making the world a better place.

Like it or not, prejudice is present in today’s society, and Zootopia is a reflection of that. But the movie provides a hopeful outlook; if we do what we can to stop discrimination and hold out hope for a better future, then a society where “anyone can be anything” is not so far fetched after all.