Zootopia 2 Review: A Bigger City For A Smaller Story

Nearly a decade ago, the original Zootopia grossed over $1 billion at the global box office. So far, it’s the last non-sequel from Disney Animation to achieve that goal. But yesterday’s successful original is today’s franchise, and now Zootopia 2 is here. Luckily, in the hierarchy of Disney's feature film sequels, this one is far closer to Frozen II than it is to Ralph Breaks the Internet.

While it's been nearly 10 years since we last saw Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), far less time has passed for the characters themselves. Zootopia 2 picks up shortly after the first film ended. Nick Wilde is now a Zootopia PD cop as well, and he and Judy are partners, but the new partnership is having some problems.

Despite having saved Zootopia in the last film, the duo is still considered to be newbies. This dichotomy leaves the team clashing with Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) and inserting themselves into places they’re presence isn’t wanted. It also leaves them clashing with each other, as the pair find themselves in counseling for partners who aren't on the same page.

Unfortunately, this inability to work smoothly together leads them to getting caught up in events when the surprise appearance of a snake (Ke Hey Quan), the first reptile seen in Zootopia in 100 years, results in Nick and Judy appearing to be guilty of theft of a rare book and an assault on Chief Bogo. This sends the two on the run and needing to solve the mystery of the snake’s appearance and the book’s value in order to clear their names.

Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are a solid buddy cop duo.

It’s a fairly pedestrian buddy cop movie plot. It’s one we’ve literally seen before, but honestly, the same was true in the original Zootopia, and that worked pretty well. There is certainly a “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality to Zootopia 2. At one point, the characters even make reference when a plot beat that we saw in the first movie rears its head again in the sequel.

But it was never the plot that was Zootopia’s strong suit. That comes from the characters and the world. Zootopia 2 brings back everything that we loved from the first film and introduces lots of new characters and locations for us to enjoy.

In addition to Ke Huy Quan’s Gary Da’Snake, Fortune Feinmeister rounds out the core cast as a beaver with a conspiracy theory podcast named Nibbles Maplestick. Frequent Disney collaborator Patrick Warburton voices Briand Winddancer, a former movie star horse who is the new mayor of Zootopia. David Strathairn is Milton Lynxley, the patriarch of a wealthy Zootopia family with interests tied to the stolen book.

Zootopia 2 is bigger and better in every way.

To list every name of note in the Zootopia 2 voice cast is difficult because there are so many. Just about every voice you hear in the movie will be from a name you know, even if you don’t recognize them immediately. Many of them have voiced far more recognizable Disney names before, from Josh Gad to Anika Noni Rose to Dwayne Johnson.

The quantity of vocal easter eggs can only be matched by the visual ones. As with the previous film, nearly every business name you see is some sort of Disney pun or reference. To find them all, you’ll likely have to see the movie multiple times in theaters or wait until you can pause each frame on Disney+.

Every sequel needs to find a way to expand on the original, and Zootopia 2 does that not only with characters, but locations too. The film introduces us to a previously unseen part of Zootopia, Marsh Market, the home to many of the aquatic mammals of the city. It’s another creative location that allows Disney to show off its skills not only with beautiful animation, but with creative and funny interactions between the characters and their environment.

Zootopia 2 Focuses On Characters, Not Commentary

However, while so much about Zootopia 2 clearly wants to outdo what came before, the thing that makes the sequel a truly worthy follow-up is that it doesn't try to one-up itself in terms of its themes.

What made the original film so unique was the way it so overtly focused on real human problems of prejudice and bigotry through its animal characters. While Zootopia 2 still deals with some of these issues (the way non-mammals are treated by mammals is a fairly obvious statement) it doesn’t retread the same ground, which is much to the film’s benefit.

Zootopia 2 largely assumes that you got the message the first time around, or at the very least, it decides not to bother if you didn't. Rather than trying to make a grander statement about society as a whole, it tells a stronger character story, with themes viewers can still take to heart.

This film focuses much more directly on the film’s primary leads of Judy and Nick. While friends, the new partners have very different ways of going about the job of investigating the issues at hand. This plays directly into their character arcs, which are much stronger here than they were the first time around.

Sequels often have difficulty with emotional takes for characters, as most or all of the character growth is handled in the first movie. However, Zootopia 2 understands that Judy and Nick still have some work to do on themselves and each other.

The only knock against Zootopia 2 is the knock against every sequel: that it can’t be as original as what came before it simply by virtue of being the second bite at the apple. Assuming Zootopia 2 is a hit like its predecessor, we can likely expect even more from the strange animal city (the movie itself is sure to tease us with that before it ends).