Had no idea what that was and just spent some time looking it up.
The concept looks really interesting but the visual style creeps me out, unfortunately: I can deal with Disneyesque lightly anthropomorphized animals but the full-on therianthropy of the Blacksad characters looks “uncanny valley” to me.
Actually, yes, it reminded me of Blacksad. Love those comics.
Also, it seems to me that nobody has so far mentioned a particular racist stereotype that the movie (in my opinion) references. Maybe because it is perhaps much more prevalent in Europe (where I am) than in the US-- The stereotypes against foxes (untrustworthy, born swindlers, petty thieves) seem to correspond with the stereotypes against Roma people. Apart from the “predator” angle, foxes in the movie could be considered somewhat analogous to Roma.
Just my 2 Eurocent!
I think it is a feature of prejudice that the same sorts of slurs and stereotypes arise in totally different contexts. They have the ability to be expressed universally, in that they keep cropping up again and again in different settings. That is, I think, part of the message in the movie - because as noted, you can’t easily track a specific set of real-world prejudices to any particular animal in the movie: they are spread out.
It may (or may not) be the case that “sneaky” or “shifty” foxes are intended to be based on Roma, and not American Black, stereotypes. Ultimately it doesn’t matter - it can be either, or both.
I see no extremely obvious problems with that initiative. I’m sure that it will work out perfectly, as expected, and no genocidal devour-fests, which rend the park sufficiently devoid of animals that they’re just as hard to encounter as they are in the real world, shall occur.
Took my mother and sister out to see it. We loved it!
So I just watched it for the second time. There were two jokes I missed the first time around.
Judy taking to her boss. He says something to the effect of, “This isn’t a cartoon musical where you can just sing a song… so let it go.”
The Godfather meets Judy and asks Nick if she is some kind of “performer.” It took me a minute to realize what kind of performer wears a police costume.
I just loved how the final “hustle” was based on Nick acting crazy… like a fox.
I’ll admit, the final hustle had me going. But in retrospect, says TV Tropes, I should have noticed they were faking by the fact that Nick’s eyes didn’t change, and Judy’s nose didn’t twitch in fear.
Did anyone else think that the actor voicing Judy’s father was Tim Conway? (It isn’t. It’s Don Lake.)
A couple of plot holes I’m wondering about. (Spoilers ahead.)
How did Manchas (the limo driver) know anything about night howlers? He didn’t see the secret lab or the sheep shooting Emmitt Otterton. All he knew was that Emmitt suddenly went crazy. And it’s not something he learned from somewhere else; Mr Big didn’t know about the night howler connection.
Why did Bellwether assist Judy and Nick? She was the mastermind behind the conspiracy they were investigating. Sure, she might have felt they wouldn’t follow the trail all the back way to her, but why take any chances? She could have done nothing and let the investigation die. If all she wanted to do was implicate Lionheart, there were safer ways to do it.
Emmitt, a florist, was on his way to Mr. Big to tell him about something really big. Manchas said he heard about night howlers from Emmitt, presumably in the limo before the latter was shot.
All part of her duplicity. If she doesn’t help Judy, somebody might get suspicious and start asking rather uncomfortable questions. Like why the phone number of a known underground drug manufacturer is on display in her office.
I just looked up Tim Conway, because I was sure he’d died. But no, still alive. 82.
It seems to be a vague kind of unevenly distributed predator folklore, perhaps merely on the level of “huffing paint thinner can get you high”. Remember, rural fox Gideon Grey also knew the name “night howlers”, though he didn’t seem to be aware of their psychotropic properties.
It makes sense to me that predator communities would retain more awareness of this frightening but misty legend about savagery-inducing substances than prey communities, because the effects on predators are apparently way more drastic.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Why did Bellwether assist Judy and Nick? She was the mastermind behind the conspiracy they were investigating. Sure, she might have felt they wouldn’t follow the trail all the back way to her, but why take any chances? She could have done nothing and let the investigation die. If all she wanted to do was implicate Lionheart, there were safer ways to do it.
[/QUOTE]
But the whole point is that she wanted the Big Sinister Epidemic of Inexplicably Savege Predators to be very visibly exposed, by a sympathetic (and photogenic) low-level public servant. It wasn’t just about implicating Lionheart in order to take over his job: it was about creating a pervasive and persistent atmosphere of alarm and despondency that would decisively establish the supremacy of prey communities and the isolation and alienation of predator communities. This wasn’t just a bit of political infighting, this was meant to be the start of a major social cleansing campaign.
And remember that Bellwether had nothing to do with Judy’s rogue reboot of the investigative activities after her resignation, which was when Judy and Nick started actually figuring out what was really going on. You better believe Mayor B would have shut that shit down if she’d known about it.
After reading through much of the thread - and looking at the subtexts -
Could some of these “neutral facts” also be commentary on the inherent advantages different strata / groups in society have?
For eg: the dynamic attractive Lion as mayor (despite being less hardworking) a comment on the advantages of wealth / class / background in elections?
Or the natural advantages of large animals in police work also be seen as some sort of commentary / comment that some socio-economic groups in society are going to be naturally predisposed to different sorts of work? (and indeed - some racial groups having an apparent advantage in athletics?)
I guess they could, but I don’t know how deliberate any particular parallel with human societies might be. It’s clear that the movie is making a point about positive stereotypes as well as negative ones being questionable, and also that group solidarity can be used for harm as well as good.
What I suspect is that the filmmakers just picked out a bunch of well-known human prejudices and then mix-and-matched them with different animal group interactions. Like any similar mix-and-match, that’s going to end up producing a lot of attributes that one can interpret as significant, whether they were deliberately intended that way or not.
But Bellwether taking over Lionheart’s job was a significant part of both Bellwether’s personal ambition and carrying forward her movement. And sending Judy and Nick off was a pretty poor way to strike at Lionheart. Neither of them had suspected Lionheart which means they might have gone to him at some point and revealed what they were investigating without knowing he was involved.
And Lionheart’s the mayor. He obviously isn’t hanging out at the Cliffside facility on a regular basis and he must have covered up his connections with it. It was just an amazingly lucky coincidence that he was visiting the facility at the moment that Judy and Nick were there and able to observe and record him. At any other time, they would have not realized he was involved with the facility and gone through normal channels to bring the police in, which would have tipped off Lionheart before the raid.
Saw this last weekend. Really really liked it. The message of bias and racism were pretty clear, and after just reading this thread I’m surprised that was in question. I did happen on this 46 minute behind the scenesfor this movie that gave some really great insights into the thought process of making the film. Really good stuff, except it’s pretty revealing if you haven’t seen the movie.
Watching this behind the scenes made me appreciate the movie more.
It now links to a private video. Can this be seen elsewhere?
I finally saw Zootopia. Loved it!
For those who are interested, the majority of what has been discussed in this thread is exactly what they struggled with when making it. I think this is the documentary that was linked to above before it disappeared offline, and it’s clear they wrangled with the ideas of racism and prejudice deeply.
The amount of effort they put into getting the story right makes me wonder why regular movies don’t do it this way.