Zootopia 2 Forces Disney Fans To Confront One Deep, Uncomfortable Truth

The jig is up, everyone. Disney knows we think their cartoons are hot, and they're messing with us.

Honestly? I applaud the House of Mouse for being bold enough to make this obvious in "Zootopia 2," the sequel to the massively popular 2016 film "Zootopia" that features cute talking animals dealing with — let me check my notes — inappropriate policing practices and something the movie calls "prey supremacy," which you can probably unpack on your own. The first "Zootopia," as you might gather from that description, is pretty striking in its messaging, but the sequel really takes things up a notch. What I'm here to focus on, though, isn't the overarching message of the film that my /Film colleague BJ Colangelo called "an exploration of how the stereotypes that pit us against those who are different from us came to be, and the lengths the wealthy elite will go to maintain a status quo that keeps some communities demonized to the point where others are so ignorant of the truth that they're willing to ignore the continued oppression at best, and actively encourage mistreatment at worst." 

No, I'm here to focus on the fact that the animals in "Zootopia" are like, weirdly hot. In an obvious way.

This isn't new, either. For pretty much all of our childhoods (especially if you're a millennial like me), Disney has been flaunting characters with bizarre, come-hither eyes and toned physiques. (I'm not personally into that in real life, by the way, so please don't spam me elsewhere — with the utmost respect to the furry community.) Thanks to characters like Mayor Brian Winddancer, Patrick Warburton's bizarrely buff horse, the writing's on the wall here: Disney knows we have crushes on their cartoons, and they're calling us out. 

Let's go back to what's typically referred to as a "golden age" for Disney — the 1990s, when they released the bulk of their classic animated feature films — and do a little investigation. I'm going to lead with the Beast from Disney's 1991 Academy Award nominee "Beauty and the Beast." Voiced by Robby Benson (who went on to make a very surprising in-person cameo in season 2 of "Severance"), the Beast is irascible, irritable, and straight up mean to Belle (Paige O'Hara) at first before she softens his icy exterior. There's a reason Belle falls in love with the Beast in his "ugly" form, and if I could take a peek into Belle's mind, I'd probably discover that, like me, she was sort of disappointed when the Beast just turned back into some guy at the end of the movie.

There are plenty of examples like this throughout Disney's history. Brian Bedford's rather infamously hot fox from the 1973 animated version of "Robin Hood" is a great example, and even Nala from 1994's "The Lion King" is strangely coquettish. (The Nala situation is particularly weird when you consider that "The Lion King" is a retelling of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," which I guess makes her the doomed figure of Ophelia? Whatever. Back to the hot animals.) The animation studio has been practically taunting people who find themselves sexually confused by cartoons for years, and now "Zootopia 2" is here to really prove the point.

"Zootopia 2" might be an overtly political film, as noted in the aforementioned review ... and yet, it's also a movie that makes sure you notice its ridiculously gorgeous animals. Let's go back to the horse mayor. Look at his open shirt. Look at his weirdly ripped chest. Is that chest hair?! What is that about? I don't want to sit here and go "hey, that horse is hot," but he's clearly designed to be hot, which is wild!

Mayor Brian Winddancer isn't the only example. To be fair, the main characters of "Zootopia" — fox Nick Wilde and bunny Judy Hopps, voiced respectively by Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin — are decently "attractive" insofar as the two animations are pretty clearly based on Bateman and Goodwin, both of whom are very good looking. What about Shakira's barely-clothed Gazelle, though? What's her deal?! Shakira is an objectively hot person, and Gazelle is clearly meant to be hot! This is saying nothing of wolf reporter Denny Howlett (voiced by Mario Lopez), who seems to be designed after Lopez himself and really leans into the fact that Lopez is attractive and ripped. Making the animals in "Zootopia 2" really hot is sort of insane, but it's also honest, and I can't help but respect that.

Disney knows we've been quietly lusting after their cartoons for so long that I guess they're just putting all millennials on blast, and the sooner we all accept that, the sooner we can try and move on with our dignity intact. "Zootopia 2" is in theaters now. Please don't get too frisky at the theater, or you'll probably get kicked out.