Widen your perspective

Rating: 8/10 (31 March 2016)

In this great melting pot of creatures and races, in this world without a single human Zootopia is probably the most important story of the year. Although it is set in this fantasy world it is surprisingly down to Earth and real. Whether it's the messages on racism, being prejudice or having dreams it is really quite thought provoking and philosophical.
Before discussing the more philosophical ideas I would also like to acknowledge the brilliance in animation. Now, obviously this is Disney we're talking about so it's obviously to the high Disney standard. But the cast is really pretty amazing, Jason Bateman's Nick Wilde just had such a sly sense to his voice which fits perfectly with his character. Then Ginnifer Goodwin as Judy Hopps just was so charismatic and positive. I've always personally enjoyed Ginnifer Goodwin's performance on abc's Once upon a time so to see her land roles such as this was great, as seeing your favourite TV show actors and actresses transition into the big screen is always exciting.
There is a point about having dreams in the beginning of the film when Judy's parents are really against the whole idea of her being a cop and tell her about not believing too much about her dreams. Well that was very real world and mature was what I thought, for a kids movie nonetheless. Not to say that I agree with papa Hopps at all, dreams are cool, they drive us.
So to this whole idea of racism and the whole prey and predator thing, in modern day society there are always prejudice ideas and labelling. Growing up and being a teenager in Asia you could really feel that whether it's 'us' towards 'them or vice versa. Personally there is always a thing towards 'Black people' within older generations and a real negative vibe towards ghettos. Being brought up with this idea on the one hand and the very open minded international school on the other hand really made me see the shallow mindedness of certain people. But that's no one's fault, I mean it's no one's fault because fear all brews from ignorance and misunderstanding. People have such limited understanding of the 'outside world' beyond what they grew up on people get a really limited idea of how others are like. They get a very narrow perspective, and I guess that's the thing we always have to widen our view so we can get the full picture and not base our ideas on short sighted and limited views.
This movie discusses ideas of labelling, how much that could mean to someone and how hurtful it could be indeed. As previously mentioned, it is important to understand each other, but take it to the next level of embracing those differences. We live in a world of diversity much like 'Zootopia' there are people of all difference shape and sizes people of different races and colours, we all have our defining features but we should never forget that we also have our similarities. Take those similarities as a bridge, or an extending hand but then through those similarities learn about the differences. We live in such a colourful world, but if we choose to live amongst the same black and white there is a whole other dimension that we would never be able to see. For our own sake and for the sake of others, 'Try everything'