‘Zootopia 2′ is an animation that gets rid of the cynically routine logic of sequels
Just when you think Zootopia 2 abandoned the heavy social allegory that marked the original, the sequel begins to unfold an even more intricate one. What appears to calm down into a typical buddy cop movie instead becomes a story about discriminatory urban planning, fear-mongering against minorities, and a group of refugees who have been forcibly displaced from their land.
This, to be clear, is a Disney excited about nature creatures living in the big city. But that’s to be expected; Many children’s films revolve around tidy lessons about the dangers of prejudice, but few have been as explicit as Zootopia (2016), a funny and charming film whose problematic metaphors about racism made you cringe if you examined them closely.
Directed by Jared Bush e Byron Howardthe sequel manages to smooth over some of these gaffes even as it delves deeper into the allegorical mire. This results in a more comprehensive and action-packed, if somewhat bloated, work. After successfully solving a case at the end of the first film, Officer Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), a hard-working bunny police officer, and her unlikely fox friend Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), officially become partners on the force.
‘Zootopia 2’ is ambitious and the complicated plot could have been reduced by a good 15 minutes Photo: Disney via AP
They are helping to protect and preserve an animal utopia where everyone is equal and gets along – except the reptiles, a subgroup that has been banned from the city for generations.
But when Judy and Nick find a snake named Gary (Ke Huy Quan) stealing an old diary belonging to a rich and powerful family of bobcats, the pair begin to uncover an elaborate conspiracy that sheds an ugly new light on the town’s origins. Their twist-filled journey to find, in essence, Zootopia’s Robert Moses, ends up causing a rift in their partnership and launching them into a series of action sequences and new territories in the city.
‘Zootopia 2’ has just been released in cinemas Photo: Disney via AP
Too ambitious
The sequel builds on one of the strengths of the original, using a kind of Russian doll technique in worldbuilding, in which visual richness and energy are brought together by consistently focusing more on the clever little gags of urban animal life. But it also extends this approach to many places and puns. A joke from The Godfather returns; we are taken both underwater and to snowy landscapes; we are in the deserts of a Burning Mammal festival and in the tall bushes of the deadly labyrinth of The Shining.
It’s ambitious to the point of being too much in a sequence whose complicated plot could have been shortened by a good 15 minutes. One can imagine a confused child’s head trying to follow the convoluted narrative, let alone understand the thorny and somewhat simplistic politics embedded within it.
But it is also, crucially, a sequel that breaks free from the cynically routine logic of sequels. Se Zootopia introduced us to an original animal world, which believes in building a universe. It can be exciting, even if it gets lost in its own creation.
This article originally appeared on The New York Times.
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