Zootopia 2

The Paved-Over Past

I didn't expect a cartoon about a rabbit and a fox sniping at each other over police procedure to send me spiraling into thoughts about gentrification and erased indigenous histories. That odd specificity is part of what makes the *Zootopia* movies stick. The first film, back in 2016, worked as a slick and surprisingly pointed allegory for racial bias in America. Coming back to this city now, with Jared Bush and Byron Howard still in charge, the angle has shifted. *Zootopia 2* isn't only interested in how different communities coexist. It keeps circling a rougher question: who had to be shoved aside so the shiny utopia could exist at all?



This time, the answer is reptiles—most notably Gary De'Snake, a relentlessly upbeat pit viper who has been thoroughly misunderstood by the city around him. Ke Huy Quan voices Gary, and it's almost impossible not to feel the resonance between the actor and the part. Quan spent years pushed to the edge of the industry, then came roaring back with an Oscar. He gives Gary that same bruised resilience. The performance has a tremble to it, a needy hopefulness that fits a character trying to belong in a place that literally built weather-controlled walls over his ancestors' homes. When Gary moves through the Marsh Market, he seems thrilled and wary at the same time, like wonder and self-protection are fighting for space in the same body. I was honestly surprised by how moved I got by a digital snake.



Visually, the movie is a blast of controlled chaos. Bush and Howard really let animation stretch here, pushing the characters into a rubbery, elastic expressiveness that feels borrowed from old Looney Tunes. There’s a chase through an endless rushing water pipe that is flat-out exhilarating. The camera dives and yanks and surges with the current while Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) get flattened and flung against the metal tunnel. It’s thrilling, and maybe a little punishing if you happen to be planted in the front row of an IMAX. Still, under all that bright slapstick, there’s a faint sadness running through the film. The buddy-cop engine is familiar, maybe too familiar. Dirk Libbey of CinemaBlend put it well: "It's a fairly pedestrian buddy cop movie plot. It's one we've literally seen before... But it was never the plot that was Zootopia's strong suit. That comes from the characters and the world."



That’s basically it. The mystery itself—a conspiracy tied to the esteemed Lynxley family and the city's founding—sometimes feels like an elegant excuse to march us through another astonishingly rendered biome. But I had a hard time minding. Goodwin and Bateman slide back into the Judy-and-Nick rhythm like no time has passed at all; they still have that easy abrasion old friends get from knowing exactly where to poke. I also like that the movie doesn’t force its ideas about cultural appropriation and displacement into a clean, reassuring moral. For a family movie, that feels unusually honest. It allows for mess. Whether that heavier thematic load sits comfortably next to Shakira’s obligatory pop detours is another question. I’ll still take a movie this knotted and alive over a glossy corporate object with nothing in its bloodstream.