I'm a Snake When We Disagree

Film: Zootopia 2
Format: Streaming video from Disney Plus on Fire!

I had issues with Zootopia when it was released. It’s a movie whose heart is in the right place when it comes to things like racism, but it gets so much wrong that it’s hard to connect it to the way that racism actually works in the real world. Essentially, the ultimate message of Zootopia is that the way to defeat racism is to just stop being racist. That being the case, I didn’t have a lot of hope for an improvement in this when it comes to Zootopia 2, which gives us a much more obvious racism plot.

The reason it’s more obvious in this case is that we’re bringing in an entire class or two of animals into the story. The original Zootopia concerned itself entirely with mammals. For the sequel, we’re bringing in reptiles. I looked for amphibians—I didn’t see any, so they may be reserving them for a future sequel (but you can expect based on the short scene in the credits that if there is a Zootopia 3, it will center on birds).

So we’re going to have a lot of the same characters here, mainly our two main characters from the first movie. Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), the rabbit cop, has paired up with her former nemesis, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a former conman fox who has joined the police force. The two are unusual partners in the sense that the other detective teams are pairs made up of the same species. Regardless, after they managed to save the city of Zootopia (the first film), they are now essentially rookies who are supposed to watch the more established teams. But Judy has always been more aggressive and tries to complete the arrest of the leader of a smuggling ring. This fails (naturally), but among the things they find is a piece of snakeskin, and snakes have not been seen in town in ages.

It turns out that Zootopia is about to celebrate its centennial, and Judy is convinced that a snake is going to show up at the gala, possibly to attack Milton Lynxley (David Straithairn), the grandson of the city’s founder and the man who invented the weather walls that separate the different areas of the city into zones appropriate for various animals. So at the gala, Judy befriends the Lynxley family outcast, Pawbert (Andy Samberg) and also encounters Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), a pit viper who steals an old journal that tells the story of the weather walls. Gary claims his family is innocent, but in the chaos, he accidentally bites the police chief (Idris Elba). Judy refuses to let the Lynxleys kill Gary, so now she and Nick are framed for the attack, and the Zootopia PD is not merely hunting them, but hunting them with intent to kill. And thus we have a plot.

As with a lot of movies like this, Zootopia 2 is going to be filled with a lot of small cameos and recognizable voices. Patrick Warburton voices the new mayor, for instance, and one of the major characters is a podcasting beaver voiced by Fortune Feimster. We’ll also spend some time with a plumed basilisk voiced by Danny Trejo. The rest of the cast is a combination of who’s who (Jean Reno, Stephanie Beatriz, Wilmer Valderamma, Alan Tudyk), and people you don’t know but might recognize the voices of.

This is, in a lot of ways, the most natural extension of the first movie. In the first Zootopia, the plot is essentially about the “wildness” of the predator animals, despite the fact that throughout the movie, it’s the predator animals that are in positions of power and authority, which seems to stand against the racism idea. Zootopia 2 is much clearer in this respect in the sense that the racism in this case is very much against reptiles in general and snakes in the specific. Having a section of town that is specifically for aquatic and semi-aquatic animals, which proves to be a haven for the reptiles.

There is a sense that the reptiles are legitimately an underclass in the city. When the police eventually show up looking for Judy and Nick, the reptiles scatter as well, evidently used to being harassed by the police. In this respect, Zootopia 2 is more solid when it comes to the racism message.

But at the same time, it’s also the sort of film that makes the racism simple. The reptiles are all good guys, even if a few of them might be on the other side of the law. Gary, who is framed and threatened for the entire film, is naturally a sweetheart, because we want to feel sorry for him. The bad guys are clearly bad (and in a reversal from the first movie, are also predators). It simplifies the message, although that makes some sense, because this is for kids.

To be fair, I think I liked this more than I did the first movie. It’s a better story in a lot of ways, even if it’s obvious where it wants to go.

Why to watch Zootopia 2: It’s a natural extension of the first movie.
Why not to watch: It feels a bit forced.