"Zootopia" was born. This is a super utopia that only Disney dares to imagine, a classic and stunning Los Angeles-style crime story like "Inherent Evil", and a political fable that reflects the shackles of adulthood and class prejudice. Breaking away from Disney's usual barrenness in constructing a worldview, "Zootopia" has everyone going crazy wherever it goes.
Building Utopia: Creativity, Details, Technology and Depth
By downloading Youcine, watch "What I love most about Disney animation is the movies with talking animals." In August 2015, Lasseter, chief creative officer of Disney Animation, recommended "Zootopia" at the Disney Fan Convention in California. . This is not Disney's first purely animated action film, but it is the first time that Disney created an imaginary world view based on animal habits and gave different animals distinct human characteristics.
The Creativity of Zootopia
The inspiration came from "Tangled" director Bryon Howard after revisiting classic Disney animated films with animals as protagonists such as "Bambi" and "The Lion King". "Why can't we let animals live in a human world without humans?"
He suggested to Lasseter. After receiving the latter's approval and permission, he hit it off with Rich Moore, the director of "Wreck-It Ralph" who later joined the project, and decided to use the perspective and behavior of animals to deconstruct a subtle issue in contemporary society: ethnicity. opposition. Constructing fairy tales from a serious perspective and telling them gently in children's language, "Zootopia" was born.
In addition to brilliant ideas
One of the keys to the success of an animation is that the details are reasonable and believable, and the best stories are often built on the most research. During a visit to Kenya, character modeling supervisor Michelle Robinson discovered the unique personality traits of different animals in their free state. Bison will always stare at their prey, camels always move in groups, rabbits will show the whites of their eyes when they are alert, and most importantly, natural enemies can sometimes drink water together peacefully, and this is also the earliest inspiration for "Animal Utopia".
In addition to fully studying the animal residents in utopia, in order to get closer to the human world, the scene design of the movie is also completely based on buildings in the real world - Sahara Plaza is full of casinos, the rainforest town is humid and sultry, and polar bears live in a Russian-style environment. Architectural style of Tundra Town.
In order to ensure the extreme reality of this animal utopia in every detail
The animation team of "Zootopia" still needs to successfully simulate the texture and denseness of animal fur. The last time Disney's "Furry Challenge" was "Lightning Dogs" 8 years ago. It’s not easy to design soft and thick fur for a hero dog, but this time Disney needs to cover all 800,000 citizens in Animal City with realistic fur. To accomplish this crazy task, Disney's team of engineers decided to use iGroom software for the first time.
Through this software, Disney implanted 2.5 million hairs on Judy the Rabbit. Even a little gerbil in the movie has 480,000 hairs, which is even more beautiful than Elsa's long hair in "Frozen" (400,000 hairs). roots) and more. In addition, to restore the texture of fur as much as possible, Disney also researched the "inner fur" of animals.
And use a real-time rendering software called Nitro to adjust the shape of the hair and change the shadow effect of the hair to better restore the various types of hair of different animals - the medium-long hair of sloths, the hard hair of foxes, and the hair of sheep. Curly hair, everything looks just right and natural. These subtle differences may be difficult for the audience to notice, and the technical requirements for each frame will increase the cost exponentially, but it is precisely because of the independent movement of details that this animal utopia is as vibrant as the film team intended.
Zootopia seems to be a utopia where the nature of animals is liberated and predators and prey can live in harmony. However, many of the subtle ethnic conflicts that occur in Zootopia can also be traced in human society - the elephant ice cream shop clerk claims that he has rights Refusal to serve any guest, a reference to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which gives small businesses the right to discriminate against gays and lesbians on the basis of religious freedom;
Deputy Mayor Sheep's attempt to win over Judy on the grounds of "small people need to be united" is a typical example of building a small political group based on ethnic labels; and even the existence of Deputy Mayor Sheep seems to be a hack when Obama chose to worship. Den ran as vice president to attract more white votes. This is the brilliance of Disney, creating a utopia where "anyone can be anything", but proving the instability of the utopia in the details to promote the development of the plot
The carnivores and herbivores who fell into suspicion, confrontation and even conflict because of an unidentified criminal case are a true reflection of modern society where ethnic conflicts occur frequently. The utopian dream of a perfect system, equality for all, and full freedom described by Thomas Morus does not exist. The crisis-ridden utopian structure in Zootopia is similar to "all animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others" in "Animal Farm".
Narrative flattening: good, but could be better
"Zootopia" is a rare film, but it's not perfect. In order to forcibly promote the development of the plot, the script has several regrettable omissions - Nick's reminiscences are not foreshadowed, Rabbit's reflection and awakening are too easy, the ending is slightly disappointing, and even the protagonist CP who has changed the circle of friends with Su , the relationship develops too fast and is illogical. Beyond that, "Zootopia" may seem revolutionary, but ultimately it's still an old-fashioned Disney family movie.
With its old-fashioned image design, fixed screenwriting mode, mainstream political criticism and always family-friendly ending, isn't this a Hollywood special movie destined to be a hit? Nick the Fox and Judy the Rabbit met the right person at the right time and did the right thing, becoming heroes and achieving upward social mobility. The importance of political correctness in left-leaning Hollywood is once again evident. Personal heroism, professionalism, racial integration, and the melting pot. Disney once again exports Hollywood-style values to the world.
The ambitions of the Disney Animation Kingdom are huge, but the way to realize their ambitions seems to be less courageous to explore human nature and more conservative in the pursuit of family fun than Pixar. People can't help but sigh, Disney is still Disney, and there is only one Pixar in the world. In order to pursue the effect of family fun, the screenwriters have perfected the ethnic antagonisms and conflicts in Animal City, but they have ignored the root causes of ethnic conflicts. Can different animals in Zootopia really live in harmony like a utopia from now on?
After animals overcome their nature, will the world be unified?
Will that elephant ice cream shop really open its doors and sell Big Mac ice cream to all animals in the future? Just as in the current American society, Black Lives Matter has become the mainstream political correctness, but behind the chants of racial equality, black hosts at the Oscars still make fun of Asians, and the rights of Latinos are still ignored by the mainstream media, even for black people. Political correctness sometimes falls into the whirlpool of overcorrection.
Utopia is so hard to find.
Disney may also know that the utopia he built cannot be designed fundamentally. Behind this beautiful vision of world unity, there are countless bloody confrontations and invisible discriminations, and these conflicts are also part of the essence of society. These are the things Disney doesn’t want to touch and can’t touch. Because "Zootopia" is essentially a family movie with a flat narrative.
At the end of the post-modern concert at the end of the film, all the characters, including good guys, bad guys, mainstream, non-mainstream, gang bosses, police chiefs, and diverse values, carnivally sing about mainstream values on the same stage. What a beautiful scene, so beautiful that it makes you dizzy. The children walked out of the theater singing and dancing happily, forgetting that a cheetah is still a cheetah and a tiger is still a tiger.