At the risk of being controversial, I actually liked it a lot more than the first movie. People credit the first movie as having good social commentary on race relations, and I can't disagree more. It distills race disparity in the most simplistic and dumb ways, while spending the majority of its runtime making jokes about how different animals do actually behave in different ways. The twist villain's motivation being that she wants to be mayor really really badly is dumb, and her reveal was so unsatisfying. The early drafts of the movie were *far* better, where the racial issues were systemic and codified into society through shock collars. I still wish we'd gotten that movie instead of the "hey we just all need to get along, guys :)" movie we got.
On the other hand, Zootopia 2 actually does a decent job of tackling certain social issues. Using race-based lies and propaganda to justify the displacement of minorities is a massive issue we face. I like that the movie covered the destruction of an entire village in the past, but *also* had the modern version where they were going to gentrify over Marsh Market and everyone was completely fine with it. Displacement isn't a demon that their world vanquished, much as its not one we've defeated either. I also liked that Pawbert was a twist villain. As much as I was a little sad to see cute clumsy fluff boi be evil, I think making the rich, white-coded guy a savior would've massively undermined the narrative, and felt like something tacked onto the movie in order to appease the rich shareholders. Subverting that by making him an asshole like the rest of his family was fantastic.
So yeah, great movie. I had a good time.
#Zootopia #Zootopia2 #Disney
