Crew
Directors – Jared Bush & Byron Howard, Screenplay – Jared Bush, Producer – Yvett Marino, Music – Michael Giacchino, Animation Supervisors – Valentin Amador, Nathan Engelhardt, Adam Green, Leif Jeffers, Bert Klein & Benson Shum, Visual Effects Supervisors – Gregory Smith & Marlon West, Production Design – Cory Loftis. Production Company – Disney.
Voices
Ginnifer Goodwin (Judy Hopps), Jason Bateman (Nick Wilde), Ke Huy Quan (Gary De Snake), Fortune Feimster (Nibbles Maplestick), Andy Samberg (Pawbert Lynxley), David Strathairn (Milton Lynxley), Idris Elba (Chief Bogo), Patrick Warburton (Chief Winddancer), Quinta Brunson (Dr Fuzzby), Bonnie Hunt (Bonnie Hopps), Don Lake (Stu Hopps), Maurice LaMarche (Mr Big), Leah Latham (Fru Fru), Danny Trejo (Jesus), Shakira (Gazelle)
Plot
Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde work on a customs/people smuggling case that ends up with them causing considerable chaos and destruction during a vehicular chase. For this, Chief Bogo demotes them to partner therapy. Judy is the follower of the conspiracy blogger Nibbles Maplestick and becomes certain that snakes, who have not been seen in the city for many years, have returned. Defying orders, they follow clues and sneak into the city’s centenary gala celebration where Gary De Snake attempts to steal the city’s founding document, the Lynxley Journal. As this descends into chaos, Judy realises that the snakes are not the bad guys they are commonly portrayed as. Aiding Gary has them listed as fugitives. On the run, they come to understand how the powerful Lynxley family stole the ideas for creating weather zones originally put forward by Gary’s ancestor and then banished the snakes from the city.
Zootopia (2016) was one of the strongest and freshest Disney animated films of the 2010s. It was a breath of fresh air in a decade dominated by the formulaic likes of Frozen (2013), Moana (2016), Strange World (2022) and Wish (2023), and the passable but mostly forgettable likes of Raya and the Last Dragon (2021). The only two genuinely original works during this time were Zootopia and Wreck-It Ralph (2012).
Most Animation being produced since the start of the 2010s has fallen into sequel generation based on popular IPs – look no further than soulless efforts like Frozen II (2019) and Moana 2 (2024), or the endless franchises being spun out by other studios – where we get an ensemble of the same characters with minimal variation in their adventures each story. Even Disney’s partner Pixar have been generating little original material and lapsed into creating lesser sequels of mostly humdrum mediocrity. I anticipated Zootopia 2 might buck the trend because the original was such a fresh and original world. Here director Byron Howard and junior co-director Jared Bush return to make the sequel – their previous co-directorial outing Encanto (2021) was one of the other bright sparks from Disney animation during the 2020s. Absent is the third director Rich Moore. Most of the original voice cast is back.
About the point that Zootopia 2 opens on a frenetic vehicle chase and much destruction, amid comedic interplay with the characters, there is the growing realisation that the Zootopia series has taken the route of being just another piece of Disney corporate franchise. This continues to be increasingly evident as the film goes on. Now the original has been distilled down to snappy character banter, light quips, a plot driven by a big injustice outrage, all run around visual gags and a frenetic slapstick action set-piece every few minutes.
Zootopia was such a creative work. By the time of Zootopia 2, it feels that everything in the film now comes test marketed and carefully polished to the Disney formula. It got to the point that I was searching the film for anything that felt like it had the cleverness of the first film. I did like a gag where Nick tries to use a vending machine only for his can to get stuck as it falls down whereupon a tiny creature gets into an elevator inside the machine and goes up to dislodge it. Another is the departure from the docks on a hippo whose stomach has been converted into a paddleboat with pop-up pavilion while it backstrokes along the river.
Outside of that, Zootopia 2 seems far more content to just give us talking animal equivalents of contemporary pop culture ephemera. Thus we get animals seen using Android phones, an equivalent of Netflix and looking up information on Zoogle, while Judy even listens to the animal equivalent of conspiracy bloggers. That’s not creativity, it’s wrapping an audience in a cushion of their own familiarity.
Moreover, like the much hated Smurfs (2025) from earlier in the year, this also packs the voice cast with anybody and everybody who has any kind of celebrity cachet of the moment right down to throwaway parts of no significance. We get voice appearances from musician Ed Sheeran, Disney CEO Bob Iger, wrestlers C.M. Punk and Joe Anoa’i, celebrity chef Nick DiGiovanni, record producer Blake Slatkin, Lego animator Melissa Goodwin Shepard and African-American activist Amanda Gorman. That’s aside from other actors such as Tig Notaro, Tommy Chong, John Leguizamo, Michael J. Fox and Rachel House in minor roles, even Macaulay Culkin there as a member of the Lynxley family, plus things being set up to allow Shakira to sing two numbers.
Trailer here