March 4 - Zootopia

On this day, in 2016, Walt Disney Pictures released its 55th animated feature, Zootopia, to theaters. Zootopia started life as a Sixties themed spy film but with animals. And not just animals living in the wild or a cityscape, but animals who existed in an environment that they’d designed and built for themselves. Anthropomorphication (to coin a word) taken to the next level. As the story was developed, the writers discovered that the part that took place in the city was the most interesting, so the spy theme was dropped, the Sixties were changed to modern day and Zootopia became a police procedural, starring a fox and his bunny sidekick.  Things progressed until someone suggested it might be better to tell the whole thing from the bunny’s point of view. Everyone agreed (pretty much), scrapped most of what they had and forged ahead again, eventually landing on the blockbuster film that hit theaters.

Image copyright Disney

What emerged from all the changes was a highly entertaining (if thinly veiled, well, maybe not for a cartoon) allegory about modern life. Yes, Zootopia is a who-dunnit in the classic style (complete with one spy movie holdover: an unlikely supervillain manipulating everyone behind the scenes), but it’s also a tale about how we’re all different and how that can make the world a better place, if we can each get over our fears. One of my favorite parts of the film is the city itself, with all the different ecosystems representing the different neighborhoods that make up any city but ultimately combining into one big whole. I mean sure, you could remove the small rodent part of Zootopia (or the Little Italy part of New York or the Gold Coast in Chicago) but would it still be Zootopia then? The correct answer is: no. No it would not.

Image copyright Disney

Producing the movie also pushed the limits of animation technology way beyond anything Disney had done before. Take the example of hair. For Frozen, Elsa was animated with a few hundred thousand individual hairs on her head. Because of all the fur in Zootopia, that number had to be raised a little bit. Even though both Nick and Judy, our two brilliant protagonists, are wearing clothes (even when they visit the nudist colony, weirdos) they were animated with over 2.5 million individual hairs. Each. And that's only two of the cast of literally thousands (Oh, and if you're impressed with that many hairs, just know that one of the giraffes had over 9 million) . An entirely knew program was developed just to handle all the fur called iGroom. There are clearly a few movies since then that have declined to use that innovation, but I digress.

Image copyright Disney

Needless to say, the world went gaga for Zootopia. It grossed over a billion dollars worldwide (and was still only number four in box office for 2016). When the awards season came around it won the Golden Globe, the Critic's Choice Award, the Annie Award and the Oscar for Best Animated Movie beating out Moana and Finding Dory. Audiences and award voters weren't they only ones who found something to like about Zootopia: it has a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 294 reviews.

Image copyright Disney

If you haven't seen this now classic tale I suggest you (Judy) hopps to it, there are reportedly not one but two sequels under serious consideration. If both of those actually get produced, it could constitute the first theatrically released animated trilogy ever done by Walt Disney Pictures. A very specific first, but an important first none the less. One last bit of trivia I enjoyed while researching this post: Zootopia's title in China translates as Crazy Animal City. So in other words, it's no different from any other one.