Animated film creates world in which predators and prey co-exist

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This article was published 03/03/2016 (3864 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ORLANDO, Fla. — In an all-mammal metropolis, a rookie-cop rabbit named Judy Hopps must join forces with a con-artist fox named Nick Wilde to solve the case of a dozen missing animals.

Welcome to Zootopia.

Plot-wise, Zootopia is a curious combination of Disney talking-animal movie and police procedural. Think Bambi meets Dragnet.

But in its overall concept, the film is extraordinary in its ambitious themes and its mind-bogglingly complex execution. With that in mind, here are five things you should know about Zootopia:

1. It wasn’t always the buddy comedy it is now.

When co-director Byron Howard first pitched the idea to Disney honcho John Lasseter, it was almost a Disney noir film, in which a falsely accused fox, Nick Wilde, had to delve into the mammal metropolis of the title to clear his name of a crime.

“The original lens through which you go into this film was through Nick’s perspective,” says actor Jason Bateman, who voices Nick. “And what they realized early on, not surprisingly, was that it’s a much more winning approach into this film to follow Judy’s character.

“She’s very optimistic and enthusiastic and that’s a great journey to follow (not just) for a young girl, but for any kid.”

Another actor might have objected to his character being upstaged. Bateman, who has two young daughters, saw how it would appeal to them to see the story through Judy’s eyes.

2. Zootopia is a talking-animal movie without humans. Other absentee species include birds, reptiles and apes.

“Apes are too much like us,” explains Howard. “As soon as we put them in the story, everyone goes: ‘Oh, the ape is the smart one.’

“And we wanted all these mammals to have equal intelligence, more or less,” the film’s co-director says with a laugh. “Except for the wildebeest. The wildebeest is really stupid.”

All the citizens of Zootopia have evolved beyond their predator/prey roles. That meant the filmmakers had to further winnow the species down to one or the other.

“Raccoons are tricky because they’re predatory,” Howard says. “They kill and eat smaller animals, but they also get eaten. So we tried to pick animals, mammals, that were clearly either.”

3. Sometimes, actors have a say in how their animated characters look onscreen.

In the case of Zootopia, the actor in question was pop star Shakira, who voices a Zootopia pop star also possessed of a single-name moniker: Gazelle.

Shakira, who recorded the hit song Hips Don’t Lie, actually persuaded the animators to flesh out Gazelle’s hips, presumably to better link the pop star with her character.

In the lead role of keen rookie cop Judy Hopps, Ginnifer Goodwin saw no reason to alter her own screen avatar: an athletic, bright-eyed bunny.

“I said, ‘Whatever you want to give me, I’m in,’” Goodwin says. “When I saw the bunny, I liked the thighs.”

The animated Judy gave Goodwin a rare opportunity to enjoy her own work without succumbing to self-consciousness.

“Normally, I can’t watch myself in something I’ve done more than once, if at all,” she says. “But I’ve watched this movie several times and I get completely swept up in it and forget that I’m part of it.”

She does get reminded from time to time, she admits.

“The animators do something with Judy’s eyebrows when she gets frustrated that I recognize in myself,” she says. “But to me, one of the biggest dreams of my career was to be a Disney animated character. And I’m only 37 and I did it and I don’t know where I go from here.”

4. Zootopia was one of six ideas Howard pitched to Lasseter in a single meeting. The others were not necessarily winners.

“One was called Pug the Bounty Hunter,” says Howard. “It was about these anthropomorphic animals in space where they were hunting down space criminals.

“One was sort of an animalized version of The Three Musketeers, another one was called The Island of Dr. Meow,” he says. “It was about this sort of crazy six-foot-tall cat doctor that lived on an island and these tourists came off a cruise ship and landed on this island were slowly turned into animals.

“It was supposed to look like a cheap Roger Corman movie,” Howard says.

Zootopia co-director Rich Moore says the one notion you don’t want to pitch to John Lasseter is “cheap-looking.”

“If John gets the whiff of anything that is like cheap or is a low grade or B movie it’s: ‘Nope,’” Moore says.

5. There’s a reason the voice of Zootopia news anchor Peter Moosebridge sounds familiar.

That’s right, it’s CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge. In a phone interview from Toronto, Mansbridge says the offer came out of the blue.

“I didn’t know anything about Zootopia. I was between assignments and I was taking a flight out of Pearson (airport in Toronto) on the way to Vancouver, and the fellow in the security line behind me said, ‘Hey, you’re Peter Mansbridge.’

“I said, ‘That’s right.’ He said, ‘I’m with Disney and I was just in a meeting and we were talking about you because your voice would be perfect for a role we’ve got coming up in our new animated feature.’

“And I thought, ‘Yeah, sure you’re from Disney, buddy,’” Mansbridge says with a chuckle.

“But we exchanged cards, as we were both in a hurry, and sure enough, I got an email detailing, first of all, that he was from Disney and, second, what the project was.”

“After some back and forth with the CBC about whether it was appropriate or not, on we went,” Mansbridge says, explaining why he ultimately got the all-clear. “Disney and CBC go back decades. I can remember as a kid on our first television watching (The Wonderful World of) Disney on Sunday night.”

Mansbridge also had his family to consider.

“I thought my grandkids would now look at me in a new way and I thought this was too good to pass up,” he says, although he also had some explaining to do to his wife, actress Cynthia Dale, who wasn’t necessarily enthused about Mansbridge stepping onto her performing turf.

“I think she got a kick out of it, but I think she was also: ‘What’s going on here? I don’t read the news. Why are you doing my work?’

“I think she was pretty excited for me. She’s done voiceover work in addition to her on-camera stuff.”

Mansbridge says he didn’t require much coaching. Peter Moosebridge bears no resemblance to animated predecessors such as Bullwinkle.

“The main thing is that they didn’t want me to be a moose; they wanted me to sound like me,” he says. “In that sense, I didn’t have to act, I just had to deliver.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca@FreepKing