Although it had been nine years since last we saw the (mis)adventures of Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), in “Zootopia time,” it’s only been a week since they cracked the predator/Night Howler case, landing Judy in the spotlight for her police work, and Nick a shot at being the first fox to become a police officer in Zootopia. And, as such, Judy’s partner. After all, they did seem to work so well together to unfurl the mystery of what was turning all those predators “savage” (with the culprit behind it being none other than “meek” little lamb, Assistant Mayor Dawn Bellwether [Jenny Slate]). But, the way things start out during their first week together, Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) and the rest of the ZPD are starting to think that Judy and Nick’s previous “success” together was nothing more than a lark.
Amidst the backdrop of this, the one hundredth anniversary of the invention of Zootopia’s weather walls (de facto, Zootopia itself) have prompted various celebrations throughout the city. For the significance of these walls are that, for the past hundred years, they “have allowed all environments and all animals to coexist in one city.” In short, the walls are a marvel of science and innovation—attributed entirely to the Lynxley family. More specifically, Ebenezer Lynxley (definitely a name that’s meant to make the viewer think of Scrooge), the great-grandfather type who made the Lynxleys as powerful and prestigious as they are today. But before that family comes into play, Judy and Nick are already causing a commotion by pursuing a case before getting the permission to do so from Chief Bogo. Deciding to go undercover with Nick’s usual “decoy baby,” the duo heads to the city’s shipyard to pursue/catch in the act the customs officer, Inspector Snootley (John Leguizamo), that’s been smuggling illegal cargo into Zootopia.
Of course, it’s only too appropriate that Judy and Nick were already “disappeared” from the meeting that focused on the details of the case and during which Chief Bogo instructed, “At the ZPD, partnership is the cornerstone of success. You want to put bad guys away? Be on the same page every day.” Talk about some heavy-handed foreshadowing. Because, yes, in addition to the crux of Zootopia 2’s theme being all about the way that certain sects of society are erased for the benefit and dominance of others, it’s also about the ways in which teamwork has to be “synergistic” in order to function well. At the same time, there’s plenty of “opposites attract” messaging to complement the notion that, even if a duo doesn’t seem to be on the same page, sometimes those differences are the very thing that will lead to “success” or a “solution.” Eventually, this “phenomenon” becomes clear despite the many bumps in the road that Judy and Nick will endure in order to seek justice for falsely-represented reptiles as a whole, and one in particular named Gary (Ke Huy Quan).
Traces of Gary and “his kind” are first noticed by Judy after she and Nick cause major destruction throughout Zootopia with their botched attempt at busting Inspector Snootley. After taking a moment to appraise the damage she’s caused with the van she’s just crashed, Judy notices and picks up the shedded skin of a snake, looking at it as though she’s never seen anything like it before. And that would make sense, considering that, as far as the mainstream population knows, reptiles aren’t “allowed” in Zootopia. However, as Judy waits for her lashings from Chief Bogo, she watches a podcast (Scales & Tales of the Weird) from conspiracy theorist Nibbles Maplestick (Fortune Feimster), informing her, “Zootopia ain’t just a mammal city. It has a secret reptile population.”
Before Judy can “dive deeper,” she and Nick are summoned to Chief Bogo’s office for their expected reprimand. But nothing prepares them for the punishment of being sent to a ZPD workshop called “Partners in Crisis.” So it is that, among other “odd pairings” of animals, they find themselves amongst a bear and an armadillo, an elephant and a mouse and a skunk and a deer. Hence, they both seem to have their Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald) in The Breakfast Club moment when she says, “I know it’s detention, but, um…I don’t think I belong in here.” But alas, Judy can’t escape her “punishment.” As for Nick, he doesn’t mind so much when their “therapy animal” calls Judy out for always being the one to speak for him and kind of take over everything. Her consistent stubbornness and need to take charge flares up soon after their first meeting, with Judy insisting that they go undercover again, this time to the Lynxley gala celebrating Zootopia’s one-hundred-year anniversary. For that snakeskin she found in the van during her failed attempt at a raid leads her to believe there might be a “fanging” as a result of the Lynxley journal being on display for the first time at the gala. This piece of “centennial history” also intertwined with the last time there was a known attack by a snake in Zootopia. Said attack being on a tortoise who was the Lynxleys’ maid…and who supposedly prevented the snake from stealing the journal before the fatal bite.
After getting all this information from another one of Nibbles Maplestick’s podcasts (which she leaves out when describing to Nick why they should go to the gala), Judy once again talks Nick into going along with her, er, harebrained scheme. Consequently, it’s at the gala that Judy runs into Pawbert Lynxley (Andy Samberg), the meekest and most bumbling member of the merciless, arrogant Lynxley family. Naturally, he’s going to factor in later in a much bigger way, but before he does, Judy and Nick have a major snake sighting as the aforementioned Gary De’Snake, a pit viper, does indeed attempt to steal the journal. And, after pleading with Judy to help him (and also telling her that snakes aren’t the bad guys, the lynxes are), her infamous conscience can’t very well let the Lynxleys keep the journal or hand Gary over to the ZPD. As a result of her refusal to comply, she, Nick and Gary decide to make a break for it instead, with Gary jumping out the window first, landing in the snow (the cold being his worst nightmare) and getting picked up by a masked driver on a motorcycle.
From this point forward, the entire plot is driven by both the need to solve this case and prove that Gary—and his entire “breed”—is innocent (and that reptiles have been set up by more sinister forces for all these decades) and the tension between/contrasting personalities of Judy and Nick as they attempt to work together to unearth the truth. That truth being that Zootopia was founded by a snake. And not just any snake—Gary’s great-grandmother, Agnes. Once Gary, Judy and Pawbert (who turned out to be the one helping Gary escape on the motorcycle) flee to the desert together, Pawbert is the one to give Judy some backstory about what really went down a hundred years ago. So it is that he narrates, “[Agnes] wanted to make the city a place where all animals felt welcomed. So she invented her weather walls to help everyone.” Thus, she created the unique design and patented it, needing “only” an investor to help her see it through. That investor was Ebenezer Lynxley, who, seeing the financial potential for such an invention, decided to pass it off as his own, tossing Agnes’ original patent into the fireplace.
Then, seeing that their tortoise maid was watching, Ebenezer decides to take it to the next level by killing her with venom and framing Agnes for the murder. This is the part where Pawbert continues, “Because she was a snake, everyone believed his lie. Soon, no reptiles were welcome. And over time, my great-grandfather buried the reptile neighborhood in snow.” A particularly cruel irony as it’s warm climates that reptiles thrive in. The horrific tale is a familiar one, with “vanished” neighborhoods being a common “casualty” of what usually amounts to gentrification. Wiping out one established community to make way for a wealthier (read: whiter) class that suddenly takes an interest in the area. One of the many atrocious examples of this was the “expropriation” (a polite word for a forced takeover of land, usually by the government) of Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles. The land where Dodger Stadium was constructed in 1962 after the original residents of the neighborhood, who were predominantly Mexican-American, had been steadily ousted by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (mainly by promises of immediate cash payments and the assurance of relocation). Gradually, the existence of the neighborhood in its original form was forgotten altogether. How could it not be, considering it was essentially razed and rebuilt to suit someone else’s financial gain? As is the case with Ebenezer Lynxley and his descendants. Including even “innocent” Pawbert.
And when it becomes apparent that Pawbert is the villain dredging up the existence of the original patent not for the purposes of reptile redemption, but rather, his own (so that he might be seen as “worthy” of the Lynxley name to his father, Milton [David Strathairn]), it does lead one to wonder why he would try to find the damning evidence at all. Because, otherwise, the information would have remained buried, forever forgotten. But then, such is his desperation to be approved of by his father that he evidently can’t see how this plan is actually detrimental to the Lynxleys rather than vindicating. What’s more, to the point of a sniveling son trying to impress Daddy, well, it so often tends to be the root of all evil in this world (see: the Orange Creature). In addition to the staunch rich boy belief that, as Pawbert puts it when he’s caught and tied up by Judy, Nick and Gary, “No one will believe you over us. We’ve always been better than you, and we always will be. Nothing you do matters.” But it does matter. It matters when multiple “little people” stand up together all at once. And it matters that a movie as categorically mainstream as this (becoming, for now, the fifteenth highest-grossing movie of all time) is reminding younger generations of that.
Moreover, during a period when The State keeps painting certain groups as “the enemy” and therefore “not to be trusted,” Zootopia 2 is a welcome reminder that at least there are still movies out there for kids imparting the message (as opposed to the messagelessness of most TikTok and other “clip”-oriented content) that things aren’t always what they seem. Especially when it comes to the way that prejudice is calculatedly ingrained into the masses by their own governments (controlled as they are by more metaphorical fat cats than the Lynxleys).
