‘Zootopia 2’ is surprisingly cogent for a cartoon about animal racism

For the uninitiated, Zootopia 2 begins by catching viewers up on the first film’s nearly decade-old story, with a flashback of unlikely fox-rabbit police duo Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) and Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) thwarting a city-wide conspiracy. Sometime later, the slick loner and his bouncy pal are a well-oiled machine, and although the movie hints that they might now be a couple, it quickly subverts these expectations, allowing them to just be platonic friends (to the likely chagrin of certain corners of the Internet). Things become mysterious when a snake scale turns up at a crime scene, leading to the revelation that the film’s titular mammalian paradise hasn’t seen the presence of a reptile—a feared category of creature—in many years. Breadcrumbs lead Nick and Judy to a rogue viper named Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), a saccharine, soft-spoken character trying to steal an antique diary on display for Zooptopia’s centennial. It quickly becomes apparent that there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to Gary and his criminal ploy, a premise that not only nudges the series into bold territory, but ostensibly backtracks the details that made the first film feel so clumsy.

See, the original Zootopia, directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore, followed anthropomorphized herbivores and carnivores finally living in harmony, but the specter of the latter’s predatory nature made their peace uneasy. This tension was exploited by the first movie’s villain, but its half-baked discrimination metaphor rested on immutably vicious characteristics—they were naturally violent!—a major misstep in thinly veiled racial allegory. Well, nearly a decade later, the approach is markedly different. Neither the first film’s herbivore-carnivore divide, nor its equally confounding gestures towards divisions between “large” and “small” animals, seem remotely relevant. Rather than treating discrimination with kiddie gloves, as mere hurt feelings and hodgepodge motives, Zootopia 2 (once again from director Byron Howard, joined by Jared Bush) builds its premise on the creation of a financial underclass, i.e. reptiles who have long been driven from their homes so that wealthy businesspeople—primarily, a family of aristocratic lynxes plucked straight from Succession—could grow richer through corruption, fearmongering, and propaganda.

Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) and Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) in "Zootopia 2."

Disney

That Zootopia 2 is more politically coherent than its predecessor is, admittedly, low down the list of reasons one might even watch Disney animation in the first place. But you have to admit, it’s kind of nuts that in 2025, a major studio movie aimed at children has a cogent political metaphor you could easily map onto numerous ongoing crises—from the displacement of Palestinians, to financially driven militias in Sudan. Rather than framing racism as hurt feelings, it exposes it for what it truly is: a system of exploitation that yields financial benefit for those in power. That a child may be able to walk out thinking about the world in this manner is a fascinating outcome.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t necessarily make Zootopia 2 good. Granted, it’s by no means a major disaster, but its sincere attempts as apologia for the first film are often buried beneath character beats that are just as malformed. For instance, the story is driven by an ideological schism between Nick and Judy, since the former is a loner by choice, while the latter is eager to help people (er, serpents) in the face of police, media and governments conspiring to brand them bad actors. After all, the one thing Gary wants is for his family to be able to return home to Zootopia, after they’ve been unjustly driven out for generations. However, Judy’s altruism doesn’t so much affect Nick’s outlook as much as it simply makes him double down on his dedication to Judy, and Judy alone.

This dynamic is also told through the language of romance (the two characters speak of how much they “belong together”) but any romantic entanglements appear to have been snatched from the storytellers’ hands, thrusting Nick and Judy into an emotionless limbo. Their friendship isn’t built on any real spark or mutual adoration, leaving the audience to fill in the blanks, when even the characters’ extraneous dialogue about their motivations can’t. The film is at its best when it separates its leads, allowing the various subplots to move at a million miles an hour, buoyed by Quan’s charming sincerity as a freedom fighter who just wants to help his kin.

In "Zootopia 2," Ke Huy Quan voices a rogue viper named Gary De’Snake.

Disney

On the other hand, the movie’s action and its many gags and reversal are at least slightly undone by a consistent lack of scale. See, in a world built for every kind of animal of every size, buildings and technology vary greatly, from large rooms meant for stallions to tiny computers used by chipmunks. So, when the various chase scenes ensue, expectations can rarely be established or subverted when it comes to action or movement. In Toy Story, you always know that Buzz, Woody and co. are smaller figures inhabiting a larger, human-sized world, so how they get from point A to B is usually an amusing challenge. The rules are far more pliable in Zootopia 2, so it’s often hard to clock the hurdles.

Older pop culture references abound—Pulp Fiction, The Shining, The Godfather, et. al—no doubt for the parents in the room, but at least things don’t stop dead in order to have them play out, as was the case in the first film. The sequel’s impatience may actually work in its favor in some ways, including papering over the numerous story elements that may not fully work, between ideas copied wholesale from its predecessor, and character beats that could have used a second draft. Still, despite being occasionally haphazard, Zootopia 2 is shockingly thoughtful in its conception of an animal metropolis that children might be able to grasp, as it helps mold a richer understanding of how the world around them came to be. It’s not hard to imagine that someday, a teen or young adult might look back at this film as a formative intellectual moment, if not an emotional one.