As a dear friend and I walked into the movie theater, the anticipation of the new Disney movie, “Zootopia 2,” made us wonder about the quality of the movie we were about to see. Was this going to be another hit from the company that carried on the legacy that movies like “Snow White” (1937), “The Lion King” (1994) and “Encanto” (2021) left behind? Or — and this option we feared the most — would this follow the company’s recent unfortunate streak of movies like “Wish” (2023) and “Snow White” (2025) that, though not as bad as people make it out to be, look subpar by Disney standards? 

Well, I am pleased to say that our experience was perfectly aligned with all the buzz on social media and we immediately understood it once it was announced that this movie had become Hollywood’s highest-grossing animated film of all time. “Zootopia 2” has picked up Disney’s tradition of making movies aimed at children but with an extra layer woven exclusively for the entertainment of its older clientele. At its surface level, the movie ultimately threads together the morals of empathy and non-discrimination, principles that we all hope children learn. That said, as well-founded as those basic morals aimed at children can be, no child will ever voluntarily read The Justice, so here are the most prominent features and analyses that adults might have missed on their first watch. 

One striking point — though often conveyed as comedic relief — was the use of psychological language in otherwise common settings. After being in the headlines after wreaking havoc on the city, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, the movie’s main characters, are instructed to attend a group-therapy session led by Dr. Fuzzby. There she’s labels Nick’s disconnected affection as a coping mechanism for emotional insecurity and Judy’s constant foot tapping as a sign of her denial that is suppressing her discomfort. This language speech would return during the movie’s climax, when both had undergone their own character-development journeys. In an oversharing session, Nick confesses to being afraid of being open because his childhood trauma has always left him without a pack and Judy admits to having a “bunny-hero complex.” Although this moment was wholesome overall, ending with a vulnerable admission that they are each other’s pack and fluffle, I can’t help but wonder if using tools from psychology turns out to be a positive concept at the end of the day. 

Depiction of anxiety struggles is not exclusive to “Zootopia 2,” as Disney quite literally personified — though not anthropomorphised — anxiety in “Inside Out 2.” However, in “Inside Out 2,” Anxiety is addressed through the patient’s perspective: Riley is never met with language ; once dealing with her issues, she is instead shown to have a panic or anxiety attack and to self-regulate through mindful breathing thereafter. This portrayal of mental illness is extremely effective, teaching children important tools of self-regulation through a character’s natural plot. However, I worry that this portrayal of psychology through the therapist’s lens and jargon that Disney has threaded in “Zootopia 2” trivializes this kind of speech. To continuously repeat therapy-like speech in media makes it be treated less and less seriously, so instead of teaching audiences tools of wellness through individualized narratives, this method only comes to make patients who might truly need therapy more averse to it and more likely to turn off their hearts when sitting in their chairs because they feel as though they have heard all this “psychology terminology” before.  

However, as far as storytelling devices go, this movie was a master class on foreshadowing. The very first true action in the movie — Judy and Nick’s chase of Antony, the anteater — ends up with Judy having to make a life-threatening decision to steer her car away from the parade and out of the bridge. As the car falls, it destroys The statue of Ebenezer Lynxley, whom we later find to have been a cunning murderer, a territorial animal willing to do anything to expand his town. Although Judy and the audience were only going to find this out almost an hour later, this reveal shows Disney’s true return to excellence and attention to detail. Another foreshadowing moment — this one being the most subtle characterization scene that I have seen in any Disney movie — is when Judy meets Pawbert Lynxley and asks about his family, Pawbert confirming his lineage and saying, “Yeah, I am a Lynxley. Or, you know, I’m trying to be.” Good heavens! How clueless were we to how charged that statement deceitfully read as a throwaway line truly was. We had already learned his primary motivation from the get-go. Pawbert wasn’t this kind man trying to fight his family and help the reptiles; he was a descendant of the Lynxleys, doing the best he could to honor his family’s name. Much like his great-grandfather, he attempts to kill our heroic crew and frame the snake. The plot-twist was driven by this characterization: He was doing all he could to destroy what threatened his family’s status to be loved and accepted by them. 

What’s more, what kind of English major would I be were I not to praise the writers’ skills regarding the “Chekhov’s gun” principle: If something is mentioned in the storytelling, it must be relevant and come back further in the narrative. The movie showed the podcaster Judy was listening to during her research, and that podcaster surely does become an essential part of the plot as a key character for the protagonists finding the reptile hide-out, busting Nick out of prison and fighting against the Lynxleys. These instances are well accompanied by the myriad of animated, subtle storytelling. Nick now wears a pink Hawaiian-print button-up, demonstrating how our fox is changing due to his relationship with Judy. The way that the “Zebroes,” a police officer duo, were drawn was of great interest too. One had striking stripes whilst the other’s looked blurry, almost as if they had been painted on. Also, while the first rocked a short and strong mane, the latter’s hair looked nothing like the typical zebra’s, being long and flowy, almost as if… Oh, enough with this already! Wake up, sheeple, he’s a horse! The Zebros were not both zebras, it was one zebra and one horse doing the most he could to appear within conformity. As subtle as this might have been, we can promptly sympathize and understand the horse’s motivation. When every other successful partnership we see is built from the same-species mammals and every relationship deemed dysfunctional is made out of different species partners, we cannot help but comprehend the pressure that the horse felt to conform, how thoroughly Zootopia’s unwritten rules reverberated through their society’s fabric. Subtlety was this movie’s marvel, and this subtle animated storytelling was matched with subtle character development. While in the beginning of the movie Nick accurately complains that Judy was overpowering him, giving him orders with no regard for his opinion and always taking the driver’s seat — both figuratively and literally — the film ends with Judy correcting Nick’s enthusiastic “Hopps and Wilde?” with a “Wilde and Hopps!” showing her acceptance of true partnership; and though Nick is a terrible driver, he’s the one driving the truck that is chasing Pawbert through the field. 

Finally, although this was intended to be a narrative where the morals are well-translated to reality, I cannot help but read this movie through a more thorough allegorical lens. For one, Chief Bogo’s statement that Hopps’ failure reflected poorly on the precinct and also affected how every bunny is perceived resonated too deeply within me. How could this not remind me of every instance where my Jewish school took us on a field trip and gave us the speech in which we should behave properly because we represented every Jew, alive and dead? And, as unfortunate as that may be, both Chief Bogo and these Jewish teachers were right — communities like ours are often judged by the actions of one individual rather than the group as a whole. Hopps allegorically stands for all of us who are met with this double standard, where there is no boundary between individuality and group representation, and thus must be cognizant of that fact and act accordingly; if one of us goes off the beaten path and engages in impropriety, we all face the consequence. 

This movie’s thorough focus on hatred takes a surprisingly nuanced turn into explaining how hatred can be a useful tool for some. The Lynxleys don’t truly hate the reptilian outcasts, they simply recognize that reptilians are deemed to be different from other animals and if they frame one for a heinous crime, then mammals will turn against every reptile and banish them from society. The allegory deepens when Nick gets caught trying to help De’Snake and Milton Lynxley delivers a hurtfully accurate line: “Water folk, like foxes, are lesser animals. If I say they helped a dangerous snake, no one will care what we do.” This is why resilience must be built amongst outcast groups, because just as much as the masses may turn against one, they can turn against the other. Allyship is crucial, and as Martin Luther King Jr. has said on Black and Jewish allyship: “My people were brought to America in chains. Your people were driven here to escape the chains fashioned for them in Europe. Our unity is born of our common struggle for centuries, not only to rid ourselves of bondage, but to make oppression of any people by others an impossibility.” It is only by standing together that we can survive. 

Nonetheless, we must caution ourselves from those who pretend to have struggles similar to ours, those who try to win our allyship through distorted versions of reality: after all, Pawbert Lynxley did strike some parallels between him and Judy, claiming they both were underdogs, and thus she should understand why he must tread this bloody path. Yet again this drives striking comparisons to Black and Jewish unity, with Father Michal Fisher, a vocal advocate for Black rights, warning organizations like Hamas only pretend to be the oppressed, and that modern Black and Jewish Americans should wake up once more to similarities of our issues and stay away from the Pawberts of real-life, the heinous murderers who pretend to be similar to us. Thus, there is much of “Zootopia 2” (e.g. psychology themes, foreshadowing and subtle storytelling and personal allegorical connections) that is aimed to resonate with the adult audience in the theater, much like the past honorable movies in Disney’s legacy. It is just how thoroughly rich this movie was that made it a true symbol of the House of the Mouse.