This text accommodates spoilers for “Zootopia 2.” Proceed at your personal threat!
The long-awaited return to the Home of Mouse’s billion-dollar anthropomorphic franchise, “Zootopia 2,” is a refreshing reminder of what Disney Animation is able to, and an all-time nice Disney sequel. The story feels a bit extra mature this time round, however the pun-filled comedy that audiences beloved within the first movie is much more prominently on show right here. At one level, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) sits at residence and aimlessly scrolls by a streaming service like Disney+, and the posters are all clear references to well-known works. There’s the musical “Ham-ilton,” the motion thriller “Die Hero: Die Herder,” the sci-fi animated sequence “Futurllama,” the charming “Piggity Falls” (as in “Gravy Falls”), an ominous, xenomorphic egg for the movie “PLATYPUS,” and the motion thriller “The Neighsayer 2,” starring Zootopia mayor Brian Winddancer (Patrick Warburton), wanting like Chuck Norris on the duvet of “Invasion U.S.A.”
Disney films additionally like to sneak in Easter eggs of a few of their greatest films, like “Zootopia 2” making a fast reference to “Ratatouille” by revealing a lion chef has had a rat controlling him underneath his chef’s hat the entire time. To make it even funnier, the animal that exposes the lion is a raccoon, which makes it a double reference to “The whole lot In every single place All at As soon as,” and the Raccacoonie (the movie that earned “Zootopia 2” star Ke Huy Quan his Academy Award for Greatest Supporting Actor). Actors who offered their voices for movies like “Moana” and “Encanto” have small cameos, as do pun-worthy performances like Michael J. Fox as a fox named Michael J. and Australian conservationist and “Dancing with the Stars” winner Robert Irwin, voicing an Australian koala named Robert Furwin.
There are manner too many Easter eggs to depend in a movie like “Zootopia 2,” however there have been two utterly out-of-left-field references to some not-so-family-friendly horror films that you just will not consider made their manner into the animated journey.
Zootopia 2 pays homage to The Silence of the Lambs
After we final noticed Daybreak Bellwether (Jenny Slate), the corrupt authorities official behind the devastating prey-supremacist conspiracy on the coronary heart of “Zootopia,” she and her accomplices had been dropped at justice, and he or she was serving exhausting time for her felonies towards furs. In “Zootopia 2,” Nick and Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) are working by the Zootopia jail after they suppose they’ve discovered a protected exit, just for a light-weight to activate in a cell behind them to disclose Bellweather in her jail jumpsuit, saved in a custom-fitted, single-occupant jail cell with bulletproof glass because the entrance wall as an alternative of the normal jail bars. It’s the actual sort of {custom} cell constructed for Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs.” (Observe: The photograph of the scene has not but been made out there, so you will should see it in theaters for your self.)
Make no mistake, this reference is intentional, right down to Slate delivering her greatest Dr. Lecter impression when confronting the individuals who beforehand put a cease to her villainous plans. However the homage is much more intelligent when you concentrate on the parallels between “The Silence of the Lambs” and the primary “Zootopia” movie, with Judy Hopps serving as a equally underestimated rookie like Clarice Starling. After which, in fact, there’s the truth that Bellweather is a sheep. Get it? A sheep … doing … silence of the lambs. Yeah, you get it.
Zootopia has its personal model of the hedge maze from The Shining
No Easter egg made me chortle tougher, nevertheless, than when it was revealed that there’s a frosted hedge maze in Tundratown that appears similar to the labyrinth exterior The Overlook Resort in “The Shining.” After Pawbert Lynxley (Andy Samberg) double-crosses Judy and Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), there is a raucous chase that takes them by Tundratown and proper into the maze. Not solely does Pawbert crouch in his pursuit, wanting like Jack Torrance after the evil of the Overlook totally took him over, hobbling round after his spouse and son, however additionally they cued the precise music from Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” to ensure everybody with good style knew this was a deliberate reference. (It additionally tickles me as a result of Wendy tells Jack she’s going to “get Danny right down to Sidewinder within the Snow Cat” when she’s evading her crazed husband, and Pawbert Lynxley is … A LITERAL SNOW CAT!)
Pixar has already spent years sprinkling in nods to “The Shining” within the “Toy Story” franchise, however seeing such a blatant reference — right down to the musical sting — in an animated Disney movie within the yr 2025 was an absolute delight. The perfect all-ages movies are those that present loads of moments for the adults watching to chortle at one thing that utterly flies over the heads of youthful viewers, and “Zootopia 2” actually went above and past to supply that. Contemplating youngsters who weren’t even in center college when the primary movie was launched are actually legally sufficiently old to drink, these references are an effective way to maintain the viewers who’ve grown with the franchise coming again.
“Zootopia 2” is now in theaters.
