I will be honest: Until Zootopia 2 insisted otherwise, I had not given a ton of thought to what it would look like if rabbit Judy Hopps and fox Nick Wilde were to procreate. I’m still not actually sure whether such a thing is supposed to be possible in the world of the Zootopia franchise, where anthropomorphic animals live together in imperfect harmony in a high-tech metropolis, commuting and eating out and engaging in corruption while remaining distinct species that each retain their own characteristic needs and behaviors. But right there at the start of the new film, Judy (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and recently minted fellow cop Nick (Jason Bateman) opt to go undercover at the docks as new parents to a bouncing baby boy.
The dirty Customs agent they’re investigating, an anteater named Antony Snootley (John Leguizamo), seems mildly surprised by the sight of this interspecies pairing but doesn’t react as though he’s encountering something out of Greek mythology or science fiction. Maybe he’s convinced because the character posing as their kid, Nick’s old fennec-fox partner in crime, Finnick, does kind of look as though he could be a vulpine-bunny hybrid. Or maybe he’s just picking up on the undeniable central theme of Zootopia 2, which is not, pious observations about our differences making us stronger be damned, about unity but about how this rabbit and this fox are hot for each other.
I am not a furry, and I would also like to apologize to the rich and varied furry community for reducing its subculture to horniness, but there is something about the sequel’s combination of almost-acknowledged romance and zoological specificity that feels hilariously targeted. Zootopia 2, which was directed by Zootopia’s Jared Bush and Byron Howard, with Bush writing the script, follows the same pattern as the first film, giving Judy and Nick little time to rest on their laurels before sending them off to investigate another convoluted conspiracy involving some of Zootopia’s most powerful citizens.
But this time, there’s as much rom to the com tropes as there is buddy cop. Judy and Nick are forced to attend the law-enforcement equivalent of couples therapy after jumping the gun on that aforementioned smuggling case at the docks. They sneak into a fancy gala being thrown by the wealthy Milton Lynxley (David Strathairn) and his cat family, an occasion that affords the partners the chance to be struck by the sight of each other in formalwear. They fight over their diverging philosophies toward their job with Judy charging recklessly into danger and Nick preferring to lie low and hold back, then acknowledge that their disagreements actually stem from how much they care about each other. That they hug things out in the end feels only partially due to this being a Disney film and partially due to a difficulty envisioning what it would look like for their respective snouts to meet in a smooch.
I don’t really think that the Zootopia creative team set out to cater to an audience that, while devoted, is undeniably niche. (The high amount of fast-flying pop-culture references suggests it’s pandering to a more classic demo of bored parents accompanying their children.) But there’s an awkwardness in the sequel that feels like the inevitable outcome of these movies stretching their allegories to their limits. Talking animals have been a core part of the Disney brand from the beginning, from Mickey Mouse yelping “Hot dog!” in a 1929 short to the dead-eyed large cats of Mufasa: The Lion King bickering over “blood for blood” — they’re cuter, more easily merchandisable, and more abstract, or at least they used to be. I never thought about whether the fox version of Maid Marian in the 1973 Robin Hood ever considered eating Lady Kluck, her chicken lady-in-waiting, because their animal nature wasn’t a matter of their essence.
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But Zootopia 2 insists on the bestiality of its characters, making a running joke out of one-half of a mismatched cop pair compulsively attacking the other after misconstruing his smile as teeth-baring aggression and explaining the nefarious deeds of the prominent lynx family as part of their territorial nature. At the same time, just as advancements in digital animation allow us to appreciate the detail of every strand of fur on its protagonists’ faces, the film can’t help but give their characterizations more real-world tangibility, too, with Nick talking about how he deflects owing to childhood trauma and Judy admitting that she habitually puts herself at risk to prove her worth in the face of stereotypes.
The goofy outcome of this tension is that Judy and Nick’s closeness starts to seem not like that of two unexpected friends but of two characters who are in L-U-R-V-E love. The clumsier aspect stems from the way these movies, while being diverting watches, are supposed to offer a message about what it means for different communities to coexist. There was something undeniably valiant about the way the first one tried, however imperfectly, to bend that long Mouse House tradition of human-acting animals into a means for an examination of racial bias. But in repeating that approach for a story about the banishing of reptiles from the city and the strategic destruction of neighborhoods, Zootopia 2 sets up parallels that strain even more at the seams.
The cold-blooded creatures, repped primarily by a snake named Gary (Ke Huy Quan) who’s smuggled in from abroad via a shipping container, are vaguely coded as immigrants and have a history of being demonized by the rapacious rich. And yet Gary is venomous, though he carries a pen filled with an antidote, and what he has to prove is not that he isn’t dangerous to others but that he’s not going to act on those instincts. (The movie, more than the first, dares you to wonder what Zootopia’s carnivores eat.) Like Elemental, Pixar’s own recent venture into summoning a fantasy metropolis as metaphor for cross-cultural connection, Zootopia 2 runs up against the climate-controlled walls of its own concept, because the way it revels in the biological differences between its characters starts to look like eugenics when you think about it for too long in the context of humanity. Better, I guess, to think about what it would look like if a fox and a rabbit had a baby. A monstrosity, maybe, but also pretty cute.
