Zootopia 2 (2025)

Well. In all honesty this film was fun, but it definitely falls into the category of type one fun. While it’s ongoing it feels exciting, but there’s an undercurrent of existential dread that manifests after the fact and that leaves you slightly disgusted, both at yourself for engaging, and at the filmmakers for what they’ve made.

I don’t know the global reception of this film, but for some reason china is obsessed with the franchise. At first it was an amusing curiosity when i absent-mindedly noticed someone with some zootopia merchandise—oh, no-one seems to care about this film in the uk, how interesting that this person has some merch—but then i started seeing the rabbit and the fox everywhere. So when this sequel came out, of course it was unavoidable. Like the minions, they appeared in all sorts of adverts for all sorts of random tat. And then we went to watch the film.

And like i say, it’s fun. The world is bright, it’s full of funny jokes that get lost in translation; judging by the fact that i was the only one who laughed out loud at “it’s a viper! a vindow viper\” in the whole entire theatre, the direct translation in the subtitles of “it’s a snake! a window wiper\” did not suggest the same level of hilarity. The majority of the text that appeared in the environments within the film featured some kind of zoo-based pun, which was kind of fun, but led to further thoughts of what life would be like if the world we live in felt the need to insert the name of a body part into the name of every piece of media we consume: “before you testify before the court, please swear on the thighble” or something. It’s weird, much like how the snakes have actual size snake plushies dotted around their living room. I cast no judgement, but life size human plushies is not my personal taste in decor.

One thing that did become grating was the number of references to other disney franchises dotted throughout the film. I already get it, disney owns the whole of western culture, i don’t actually need or want a reminder of that in my two hours of attempted escapism. And the most egregious offence was one character, a film vendor, had the cheek to comment about how barren the landscape of films were, being made entirely of cash-grabbing sequels and prequels. It took me right out of the world and reminded me that i was indeed sitting in a cinema and watching a mediocre cash-grab sequel.

In terms of the plot, i don’t want to be that guy but it seems everyone in the cinema (or at least, me and the guy sitting next to me and providing his girlfriend with a running commentary of what he thought would happen next) predicted what would happen, especially the Major Twist that occurred about three quarters of the way through. There were a lot of loose ends that i don’t think were satisfactorily tied up including the behaviour of the main characters.

Which leads me to my largest gripe with the film, which is that both the main characters are unpleasant. The precocious rabbit doesn’t listen to anyone else, and is simultaneously unreasonably suspicious of everyone else who for all intents should have some level of wisdom, and unreasonably trusting of the underdogs in situations where the people she knows are in danger. The fox doesn’t care at all about anything except making jokes and bumbling along, and this should provide some fun contrast but mostly it just results in childish bickering, until they resolve it at the end in the world’s fasted therapy session in the middle of the dramatic climax. That they choose this moment to resolve their differences, despite knowing that their one friend has been lethally poisoned and their other friend is a cold-blooded snake who could fall into hibernation while being pursued by a crowd of villains and police officers who all want him did suggests that they didn’t learn anything of note, as long as their own feelings are intact. The snake is wearing a scarf to protect himself from the cold? Please.

For the most part, during the watch the film is fine, but if you want to discuss it afterwards, as is often the way with films, the cracks begin to show. I don’t know what disney’s motive was with the plot of the film, beyond money, but a shoddy plot and a shoddy resolution result in a disappointing offering.