weirdzootopiaframes

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if it was fair game to have jokes about judy having an unfathomable number of siblings, i think we can also safely assume that lionheart had a wife and a mistress and an ex-wife and a mistress and a mistress and a mistress and a mistress and another ex-wife and a mistress and a mistress and one (1) "girl on the side"

#he considers the term 'side-chick' beneath him but obviously not the practice itself

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yeah, pretty sure that's the main character. it's the one with the fox

#nick shrugging like ''i dunno either. close enough right?''

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what sucks here, right, is the - well i mean obviously it's the seven thousand people who are going to lose their jobs.

but the other thing that sucks here, right, is how the cart has been put in front of the anthropomorphic horse. zootopia is the kind of story that could lend itself to any number of potential sequels, but given the poignancy of the original film, the question really isn't 'could' but 'should'. yeah, you can churn out any number of funny talking animal adventures in fake new york. but will it resonate? is there a meaningful core, held to the same high standard as the original, to your new pitch?

we've been waiting for the same creators to come out and announce, yes, we have an equally solid idea that we're equally excited to show the world. this is not that.

all disney products exist to make money, but hoo boy, these new sequels exist to make money. no ifs, no buts, bob iger needs cash and he needs it yesterday. that's why it's been thrown out with no details alongside its litter-mates frozen 3 (!) and toy story 5 (!!!!!!!!)

if jared bush, byron howard and rich moore (the last of which, let's not forget, no longer works at this company) had sequel concepts knocking around while working on the first film, then i think there's a reasonable chance we could get something reasonably good. nothing great, necessarily, but watchable

but a zootopia sequel created solely to be a zootopia sequel is, let's be real, going to feel like a two-hour episode of zootopia+

#i've said it before and i'll say it again #the first film was a fluke #it's bizarre 2016!disney made something that thoughtful #and the odds of 202X!disney doing again are. not high

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#not the best way to hear news i was quite comfortable never getting

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only one person is good enough for him, and only one person can handle him

#also please ignore the typos #i can make polls but i cannot edit them for some reason

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i gotta give due credit: this is a weird zootopia frame.

#easily one of the weirdest ever! #zootopia #zootopia+ #zootopia plus #sam the otter

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#zootopia #zootopia+ #zootopia plus #judy hopps #duke weaselton #i felt legit validated by this! #i fondly remember this exact weird frame #and it got showcased... i am like the proud parent

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let's wrap this up, shall we

What's this one again?

zootopia+ boldly ends on a brutally effective metaphor. pause for a moment. think of the thousands of people, even in quote-unquote developed countries, who find themselves stuck in dead-end jobs just to get by. people who could be novelists, or engineers, or a competent twitter ceo, instead trapped in a tiring spiral of serving tables and scrubbing dishes

that's sam. sam the otter, original zootopia+ character, is adorable and charismatic and fun. she is trapped in unfunny comedy routine

Was it a good idea?

who could have guessed that a scene that was very funny six and a half years ago might not be equally funny when repeated wholesale

there's one bit, near the end, where they come up with a new and darkly hilarious way to iterate the joke. (if you've seen it, u no which part.) but this was also the only short my wife and i ended up outright talking over. we know what the joke is. we remember it. from six and a half years ago

also has anyone ever enjoyed an episode of anything where a character has tickets to something important, but events threaten to make them miss it? that just activates my anxiety more than anything else man

How well does it mesh with the movie?

this is a weirder one. next time i rewatch the film, and get to the ending scene of nick and judy pulling flash over, i feel like i'm definitely going to mutter 'and also there was an otter in the backseat. and despite the direct cut to this scene from the morning briefing, it's like, half six at night'

also i guess the concert sam's going to is the dance party at the end of the movie. they all made it!

What important detail that you missed was pointed out to you by your cool wife?

guess who's back. back again

raccoon boy's back. be his friend

but also, this time, i pointed out something very important to her >:3c

Best character?

i really like sam. and i liked seeing bucky and pronk, judy's terrible neighbours, in a brief appearance. despite being wholly over the sloths, i liked hearing kristen bell reprise and indeed flesh out her cameo role as priscilla

but forget them. forget all of that.  this is the moment this entire 'series' justifies its existence

my special booooooyyyyyyyys ;~~;

they're here and they're sharing wine at a table for two at an upscale restaurant and refusing to take off their bulky coats despite being indoors for presumably hours

they just keep happily chatting to each other, ignoring the #zany #shenanigans occurring around them. eyes only for each other

gary is the cutest extralegal mercenary in cinema history.

circling back to how this takes place just before the film ends, i'm choosing to believe they're splashing out on a nice dinner to celebrate the fact that, while their boi leodore remains incarcerated, they have escaped any such punishment themselves. good job, zootopia+. the dream lives on

Rating out of ten?

our odds of getting a 22-minute-an-episode tv show, centring around original characters like sam, has now either gone up (successful proof of concept) or down (why make more? you already got zootopia+!). either way they're probably still very low though

#inside of me are two wolves. #one is gary. one is larry. #that's all i need in this life

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a noirish adventure in old zootopia would really hit the spot for me, honestly. as would any intrigue set in the early years of the city's modern formation, which i've always pictured as looking like 1890s san francisco - discovering an unfinished metropolis of cars and even a tram (!) as you dustily ride in on your horse. except you're not riding a horse, obviously. you are a horse

in a shallow attempt at engagement i will ask the small surviving fraction of my once mighty follower-base (you (the horse)) what time period you think would be neat

#1970s zootopia about columbo's fursona (small dog)

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look at that, they broke their title convention for this one. everyone go home the entire show is cancelled

What's this one again?

clawhauser pursues his dream of being gazelle's back-up dancer. bafflingly, both idris elba and shakira made time to reprise their roles for this

Was it a good idea?

clawhauser is a special boy indeed and i can't pretend i'm not happy to see him. i'd've maybe given him something more substantive, and less 'oh no! he is doing bad at a talent show! on live television!!!!!', but whatevs

How well does it mesh with the movie?

for better or worse it is literally all a dream

What important detail that you missed was pointed out to you by your cool wife?

bending the rules of my own question here because absolutely no-one would miss this but i do want to share the specific phrasing she used in saying that bogo unveiled his abs "like fuckin' wolverine popping out his claws"

Best character?

saying "ooh, a big kitty lady" feels like a copout answer for me, but lacking substantive alternatives,

ooh, a big kitty lady

(why were all three of the non-shakira judges tigers? was it some kind of statement? does it say a lot about our society?)

also fangmeyerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Rating out of ten?

acabad (all cops are bad at dancing)

#i'm sure for those of you who ship clawhauser and bogo this was like crack

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by the nine........................ they hit the dab

#unironically these two shoulda won #''but it was all a-'' i know. nonetheless

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mawwlon bwando impwession.

What's this one again?

at fru-fru's wedding, because god friggin forbid this series isn't at least one third about the same family of one-note mafia stereotypes, mr. big tells a meandering anecdote that no-one interrupts because he is a crime lord

Was it a good idea?

this is one of those times where like... i was never gonna enjoy 'what if we did a reality tv show parody', but i do want to see zootopia in other time periods, always have, and half-hearted execution feels a lot worse than an idea i just would not have vibed with

the original film was set contemporaneously to its release, showing 2016 technology. godfather II, which for some reason we are doing????, had its title character immigrate to america in 190hecking1, which was never going to square. instead, we only hear he arrived in "nineteen-mumble-mwah-doesn'tmattah"; fair enough, but that immediately removes any sense of time beyond 'yesterday'

from there, he interacts with mammals wearing snazzy old-timey outfits, but also mammals who are still wearing 2016 clothes. some of the buildings have been retrofitted, many have not

doug is here. that's just doug.

and like, i get it! in order to do this justice, you'd have to basically start from scratch, essentially recreating the entire city from the ground up. that's a job for a fully-funded feature length sequel, not a direct-to-streaming short. but that doesn't change the fact it's weird to see this scruffy urchin hand a sepia-tone cannoli to some guy wearing a primark polo shirt

How well does it mesh with the movie?

because this is an in-universe story told by a mob boss to a respectable crowd of family and friends, i'm choosing to believe that basically everything mr. big says is weapons-grade bullcrap and his ascent to power was far bloodier. show me the tiny, tiny bones beneath little rodentia

What important detail that you missed was pointed out to you by your cool wife?

this excellent frame

Best character?

yeah no it's obviously old-timey gary over here. gary's dirtbag great-uncle gerald. that's clearly a weaselton next to him too, but i care less about that

Rating out of ten?

go read blacksad

#stick to the comics though #i can't recommend the game it is poorly made on like a coding level

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alright, this relates both to the second short i covered on chewsday and the fourth short i'm gonna cover today, but i didn't want to get into it during either review because frankly it deserves its own post:

what is up with fru-fru's husbando

i get it. you're making a weird interquel thing using minor characters. putting focus on models that were designed to be shown once in a wide shot. if even our leading lady got something of a polygonal facelift, then surely any newly-important characters need the same

except there's a difference between a facelift and a face............. off (the medical procedure where nicholas cage steals your face and puts another face on your face)

this is what groomshrew looks like in zootopia+

and this is what he looks like in the original film

which wouldn't be an issue, except that is also how he looks in zootopia+. i did not get that frame from my copy of the movie, it is a shot that comes 27 seconds before the other one i just showed you

"maybe fru-fru is just getting her photo taken with some random beady-eyed guest", you might say. but even if that's what's happening, the contrast between the older black-eyed designs and the new models with full Disney:tm:brand(r) eyeballs(c) is still evident via cousin morty

idk man. it just feels weird

#please don't tease the arrows i drew in microsoft paint

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like a vengeful angel alan tudyk has returned to his eternal domain (disney voice work) and this time he has brought his singing shoes

What's this one again?

duke weaselton is confronted by the existential nightmare that he is a secondary antagonist in a children's movie, and ruminates on how his life might have been different. through song.

Was it a good idea?

there are two good half-ideas here, and i will give due credit for efficiently stapling them together. duke is on one hand a natural choice for whatever it is we're doing here, but doesn't necessarily lend himself to an engaging plot, especially if we're sticking within the confines of the film's events. i can also definitely picture the writer's room for this project being like "hey, can we do a musical?" without having a lot of good ways to squish that into a seven-minute outing. putting the two halves together makes sense to me

How well does it mesh with the movie?

that said, i think this would've worked better if it was set after the movie instead of during it. the punchline that duke's flirtations with redemption aren't going to stick is obvious enough without the knowledge that we're going to see him later, selling bootleg dvds of movies that no longer exist

also it's kinda weird that they reuse footage diegetically. like, it works, but as duke himself notes: who filmed that? who took high-quality footage of these events from multiple angles, and edited it together, quickly?

What important detail that you missed was pointed out to you by your cool wife?

we have a raccoon!!!!!

if there was a raccoon in zootopia before now i woulda known about it, but there wasn't, but here one is! looks like a kid from the proportions. very cool. almost missed the little guy, but my wife didn't! for all my kvetching they did at least maintain the vital zootopia experience of "oh hey look at that cool furry in the background"

she also clocked that this is specifically the crown prince john wears in robin hood (1973). very nice

Best character?

see above! there's also

FANGMEYER

and also also, this trash wolf. i've said before that i appreciate how contractual yassification aside female characters in this art-style aren't completely slathered in curves and eyelashes and pink. wouldn't have pegged her as female without her speaking voice... almost like.......... some kinda wolf.........................................................

Rating out of ten?

the line "I could do a weaselly dig, become a big! ty! coooooooooooooooooooooon!" is stuck in my head and i want it to stop

#might be wolford next to fangmeyer there #'cept I always pictured him as the grey one

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duke weaselton discovers a technologically advanced society is easily shaped into an inescapable panopticon of surveillance, 2016, colourised

#this went relatively smoothly as far as my gifs-for-tumblr misadventures shake out #only had to render it four times #duke weaselton

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uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh

What's this one again?

you know what it is from the title

Was it a good idea?

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh

i have never watched one of these shows and i haven't exactly been sold on the concept

How well does it mesh with the movie?

in... principle... this is functioning as intended. if you're going to make a zootopia interquel that has to be about established minor characters, and also has to be set within the events of the movie, this is certainly one. you could do. even adds new emotional context to judy saving fru-fru, which is nice? i guess?

except

then they do a night howler gag, at the party that nick and judy just left as they sought to solve the mystery of the night howlers, which is peak "here's a dumb joke that invalidates a core moving part of the source material". so.

(and there's another thing. we'll get to it later.)

What important detail that you missed was pointed out to you by your cool wife?

well for one thing she reminded me that it was explicitly established that night howlers' effects only kick in if you ingest the flower, not through smell. worse again

also she heard the director of cinematography had to watch a bunch of these kinds of shows to get the authentic feel:tm: right, so she was braced for it in a way i was not

Best character?

in your language, laddie,

FUCK everyone else

i respect YOU

Rating out of ten?

i'd say "disappointed the real rodents of little rodentia did not perish" except it looks like they actually did

#normally i'd replace that 'fuck' with a 'heck' #but heckin' fuck it