The Disney that created Zootopia in 2016 is very different from the Disney that just produced its sequel in 2025. By Disney standards it’s not so long of a stretch (The Rescuers Down Under came thirteen years after its predecessor by which point the audience for it had evaporated), but they feel a world apart. In 2016 Disney was still riding high off the resurgence Tangled and Frozen had given the studio -though shortly after it the studio entered a long creative slump it remains in the midst of, wherein it has been very hesitant to take a chance on a new idea. Zootopia 2 is the fourth animated sequel of the last seven years -and though it is on the heels of Moana 2 (and is likely to be at least a fraction as successful), there’s not much in it to turn the tides of Disney’s current rather lacklustre reputation on its animation front.
Zootopia was always a bit of a gimmick idea to begin with, and the earlier movie went pretty far with that gimmick already, wrapping it in an obvious but cogent and occasionally startlingly shrewd discrimination metaphor. Zootopia 2 shifts some parts of the commentary, but is essentially going after the same effect. It reprises much of the creative team in the script and direction of the first film -with the perhaps notable exception of co-director Rich Moore (the Simpsons and Futurama veteran who’d previously directed Wreck-It Ralph). I don’t think that his absence solely accounts for the movie’s comparative mediocrities, but I also don’t think it’s irrelevant.
Despite the near decade gap, the film takes place almost immediately after the first, with the bunny police officer Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and her new partner the fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), basking in the success of saving the city and taking their every assignment like its another world-threatening event. Reprimanded by their superiors, they nonetheless investigate ardently the case of a mysterious snake potentially targeting the city’s centennial celebrations -snakes having been informally exiled from the city and alongside other reptiles make up a heavily prejudiced against demographic of this world. Unsurprisingly, in pursuing the snake named Gary (Ke Huy Quan), his real motivations along with a conspiracy relating back to the founding of Zootopia are uncovered -as Judy and Nick clash in their priorities through the case.
The racism metaphor of the first movie, though certainly obvious and a touch shallow in some respects, was coloured by a curious nuance that understood to some degree how racism functions in a modern society, exposing things like systemic barriers and in that film’s best scene, unconscious biases. This sequel, in going over similar ground, isn’t so distinct -or at least feels less so after many a Disney film that has marginally touched on related social commentary. Reinventing the same basic issue but with a different marginalized form of animal is undeniably rather lazy -and undercuts some of the growth implied by that first movie. Here it ultimately comes to relate more to themes of colonialism and xenophobic scapegoating, with its one interesting facet being a discussion on historical revisionism to conform to prejudice -something that frequently happens and just as frequently is blindly accepted. But beyond acknowledgement and a vague notion of reconciliation, the movie doesn’t do much with such a story point, drowning it in the personal drama of the two leads as well as eventually Gary, whose injustice is boiled down to a merely familial angle.
He is a bit of a hollow character, driven and desperate, though sweet and cute and over-excited in that way that has become unfortunately cliché for characters of Quan’s. Nick and Judy meanwhile are characterized with as much of that straight-laced vs hustler dynamic as can be managed, though somewhat now reversed -as Judy seems more willing to step outside certain legal bounds, and Nick endeavours to rein her in. There is also a different kind of chemistry between them that the movie seems simultaneously both attracted to and afraid of. The value in their “partnership” is frequently stressed, despite it not being too long-established -their relationship is a key theme for the movie, them being broken up a critical threat. And when they drop every once in a while how much they mean to one another, combined with both the animators and voice actors playing to tangible language and intonation of romance, it’s much more perplexing the awkwardness of the movie stepping back, effectively gaslighting the audience into a lot of ‘just friends’ rhetoric. Whatever fears of some weird taboo that might be, this lack of commitment renders the relationship distractingly confused.
For the most part, the villains are more clear-cut this time-a family of wealthy lynxes led by a patriarch voiced by David Strathairn. It’s the reason for their villainy that is more the mystery here. And in pursuing that Nick and Judy are sent into a few creative new environments, guided by a conspiracy theorist stereotype beaver called Nibbles (Fortune Feimster). In spite of the irritability of this character the climates are curious and inventive, particularly the bayou where many reptiles have been functionally restricted, and then later a historic though abandoned snake village. In fact the bulk of this movie takes place outside the titular Zootopia, both literally and thematically -which is at least an interesting choice that marks the movie as formally distinct from its predecessor.
However the novelty of a collection of anthropomorphic animals comprising a human society predictably doesn't go so far this time, and the repeated gags like the mafia shrew and the brand-consolidating Disney parody movies only makes the conceit feel more tiresome. Other jokes are just broadly pretty weak, like a pair of mountain goats with archetypal Swiss accents and costumes, and one line from a character voiced by Andy Samberg that suggests he may have just been cast for a Brooklyn 99 reference. He winds up playing into one of the many efforts to recreate the effect of the first movie -a banal Disney trope then that is even more of one now.
Zootopia was not a great Disney movie, though it was a perfectly good one. Like with many a recent Disney sequel or reboot though, Zootopia 2 shines a spotlight on its qualities by failing to live up to them. It may have been a bit heavy-handed, but the metaphorical commentary of Zootopia was stark and a little bold for some of its imagery and implications, to the degree that Zootopia 2 cannot even fathom approaching with its broadly much more timid, generic form of conscientiousness (just consider how the two movies approach the police force and institutions vs. the 'one bad family' dogma). It's also painfully constrained, in how it articulates its central relationship as well as other things like a character appearing to die in a beat of suspense only to turn up later and okay with no explanation. There is some creativity to the movie, some good bits of animation and the crumb of cogent idea to interrogate related to class, prejudice, and colonialism. But crumbs don't make good currency in Zootopia.
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