Coyote Cinema: Zootopia

[cyrano]

This was so much better than it had any right to be. Somehow I missed the theatrical release--it may have got caught up in the publicity for 'Sing' or something else animated that looked mediocre--but we had guests tonight who corrected that. This is another Disney effort with a lot of inside jokes, and some really gut-punchy jokes about races and relations. I didn't expect the plot to deliver much because curse of low expectations on animated kids movies, but the story was really good. Plus Idris Elba shouting.

Comments

[merlinofchaos]

Oh wow, Zootopia was a huge huge theatrical release. I'm surprised you missed it. We saw it in the theater.

I will say, the movie left me really thinking, though it also left me angry at the writers when I thought deeply enough about their point.

If you sit down and really analyze it, it tells the racists they're right and it tells the diversity folks they're right, so *both* political spectrums can watch that move and come away thinking they've been right all along and it's a heart warming feel good liberal AND conservative fantasy that ultimately doesn't actually have a lesson to teach, it just feels like it does.

[tavella]

Hmm. What parts do you think were telling the racists they were right? It's been a while since I watched it, but I remember having something of the same thought and then the end turned it around, but I'm kind of vague on the details.

[merlinofchaos]

It's been a little while, so I'm having trouble remembering the specifics.

But one that stands out in my memory is that it's pretty easy to identify with the predators; they're "oppressed" and "outnumbered" by the prey and people are unfairly afraid of them and think they have more power than they have.

From one perspective, that matches up pretty nicely with minority populations.

But it also matches up with how the white nationalists see themselves; they seem themselves as being held back by large numbers of inferior people who are in charge.

You especially have the subplot where one of the inferior prey was trying to make the predators look much worse than they were as a power play; that's exactly how those people feel about how they're made to look in regards to racism and feminism.

There was also a different divide that wasn't really talked about; the small predators versus the big herd animals. For the most part, the ones who were really in charge were the bigger, more powerful herd animals, and the mayor was a predator. I don't remember exactly what I'd seen about that, though, but it stuck out as something unspoken in how the power dynamic worked.

[merlinofchaos]

Oh be sure to go watch the Honest Trailer for it; it really has some excellent, on-point digs.