Zootopia

In DC Comics' Captain Carrot universe ("Earth-C") all the animals were vegetarians- the only exception was a "Wuz-wolf"- a werewolf parody who changed into a human and wanted to eat pigs!

Isn't that the backstory of Watership Down?

I will keep my eyes on the progress of this film as it looks quite interesting....

Yeah, what I think is going to make this film interesting is that it will have more Furry Reminders than we usually see in this kind of work.

edited 28th Jun '15 10:49:23 PM by DS9guy

That's a good point actually. KFP doesn't really get the negative furry stigma that this film does, not even with the new one coming out just two months earlier. I like to think that it's simply evolved beyond that point and people see its other merits now, like with The Lion King and numerous other animated films around that time. Hopefully, the same will happen to Zootopia and these people will eventually calm the hell down.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm looking forward to. One massive Deconstruction of a World of Funny Animals. That's the kind of thing that will make this film truly original.

edited 29th Jun '15 6:03:14 AM by Berserker88

The Lion King? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Care to explain what's so funny about that? I appear to have missed the joke. Please enlighten me.

Ze furries love it to a ridiculous degree.

I'm well aware, and that was exactly my point. The mainstream doesn't constantly bitch about it as just furry fare, but as a perfectly good movie in its own right. This is what I want to see happen with Zootopia.

The "furry" audience is too small to recover this film's budget; it has to play to a general audience, and do it well.

I believe Disney can do this. Disney is on a roll currently. Perhaps peeking over Pixar's fence has something to do with it. There has to be something worthwhile to this production, something to interest the general public, in order to draw people into theaters.

The Enemy Mine dynamic isn't new, but it is interesting. The live actions films 48 Hours and Red Heat went there. In Zootopia's case, it's more than criminal paired with cop, it's a criminal predator paired with police prey. And in the cases of Disney's Bolt and The Emperors New Groove, Disney has shown they can make "buddy pictures" with mutual antagonists work.

It adds something more, if I'm reading the promos right, that both Nick and Judy become fugitives. Nick gets to see Judy's "goody two-shoes" tenet that injustice happens when it's allowed to happen, and Judy gets to see how criminals stay "off the grid" out of necessity. Dang, there are intriguing possibilites in this premise; I want to see Disney go at this.

Believing Disney's pandering to the furry fanbase "for the money" is like claiming they pandered to the video gamers with Wreck It Ralph. While that may be the case (the video game industry is probably the most profitable in all world entertainment), it was a one-time thing.

Unless we get a Wreck-It Ralph 2.

Which is basically looking like an inevitability.

Just to be clear, I was not at all claiming this.

Disney isn't peeking over Pixar's fence, they practically paid Pixar to take over their flagship animation studio.

edited 30th Jun '15 9:11:58 PM by TheSpaceJawa

They very nearly shut down WDAS when they acquired Pixar, but were convinced against it.

My understanding is that Pixar Animation exists as an autonomous entity from Walt Disney Studios, piggybacking on Disney's theater distributorship network. Pixar could make the movies, but getting them onto movies screens is whole different animal. "You wanna play on my turf, you pays my toll." This gives Disney the excuse to attach their Vanity Plate to Pixar productions. Something similar happens with production "units" within a studio: MGM, for example, had one unit headed by Fred "Tex" Avery, and another unit headed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. Despite producer Fred Quimby's efforts to keep the two units segregated, the three cartoon makers were good friends, and some stylistic "bleed-through" is evident in both Avery's output and Hanna-Barbera's cartoons. I am positive that the same "bleed-through" mechanism is at work between Pixar and Disney, benefiting both studios.

As far as I can tell, Lasseter has introduced a more Pixar-style management scheme, along with a system where all the directors who are currently working on projects come together, show off their work, and take suggestions.

But Disney and Pixar have different feelings to them either way. Closest either have come to the other was Bolt, which felt like Disney's attempt to be Pixar. Wasn't a half-bad job either.

I personally hate when a company gets any credits. We should not say "Disney movie" or "Pixar movie". That puts corporations in the position of creators, which is empirically wrong. Directors, writers, artists, and voice actors make the movie.

I know I cannot convince the world, but I propose from now on we call any movie by the name of the director. Writers and art directors would get credit too. Distributors (Disney, Pixar, Warner Brothers) get the last credit.

• Byron Howard
• Rich Moore
• Jared Bush

are the directors.

edited 1st Jul '15 4:59:39 PM by KlarkKentThe3rd

I personally hate when a company gets any credits. We should not say "Disney movie" or "Pixar movie". That puts corporations in the position of creators, which is empirically wrong. Directors, writers, artists, and voice actors make the movie.

.... you know what? ... that's exactly what I'm gonna do.

Crediting the writers, the directors, the actors still leaves out hundreds of people who made the movie possible. Animators, storyboard artists, editors...

That's why we use "Pixar" and "Disney" as shorthand. It was a group effort, and these groups have given themselves names. Might as well use the group name.

Pixar and Disney are not groups. There is always a group making a movie, but that group works for the corporation. Corporations finance, distribute, market, and retain control of the IP (Land Before Time 12).

People say "Mel Brooks movie" or "Christopher Nolan movie". They don't say "Warner Brothers movie" when they walk about "Tim Burton's Batman".

In this case, the group financing, distributing, etc. is called The Walt Disney Company.

Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios are the groups that work for The Walt Disney Company.

And with Pixar, at least, it's hard sometimes what individual to really give primary credit to, especially when they're no stranger to actions like replacing directors half-way through production if said director isn't working out the best for a movie, at which point it becomes difficult to say that the movie is the new directors movie.

The head character designer is a guy called Cory Loftis. This gives you a pretty good idea of his portfolio. I bring him up because I think his style really shines through when we see all the background characters in the teaser trailer. There is a real emphasis on both bringing out the animal shape of these characters and making sure no two species look alike. There is also some fun stylistic exaggeration like the length of that rhino's horn.

Also, in reference to Nick's selfie, I love when a carnivore character gives a grin full of fangs. Simba and Nala going "please" comes to mind.

edited 3rd Jul '15 5:02:48 PM by DS9guy

A bit late to this, but I think the main reason is because of the furry pandering the trailer seems to give. Such as them straight up defining "anthropomorphic" which is what the fanbase is all about, as well as the be-fur pun. Furries are huge on throwing 'fur' into words. It really is YMMV right now though.