Is Zootopia sci-fi or fantasy or neither?

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Sci-Fi Wi-Fi > Is Zootopia sci-fi or fantasy or neither?

FunkyAl: Mar 28, 2010; Your vitals soar.

I would call it fantasy except that it is constantly trying to justify the fantasy elements with some boring, internal, self-contradictory logic. "Cartoon animals living in a city and behaving like people" is so easy to imagine that it formed the foundation for popular animation 100 years ago, so the film ends up being a lot of very old jokes about ways animals are, but they can't really do any of the fun stuff cartoon characters can do, and all their character momentum is directed toward a plot with very dark and down-to earth themes. In fact, the themes of racial prejudice and rejecting stereotypes completely contradict hilarious, cutting edge jokes where lemmings eat a lot of popsicles all in order, and sloths are slow.

It's like, it is technically fantasy, but it cannot possibly be because it is pulling back so hard from its natural fantasy elements. It's hard sci fi.

Cobalt-60 posted:

It's fantasy.

Even if you buy into the basic ideas (anthropomorphic animals? sure), there are WAY too many unanswered questions. Beginning with "what's keeping herbivore population in check?"

the guy who shot bambi's mom

# ¿ Sep 16, 2020 16:43

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 07:19

FunkyAl: Mar 28, 2010; Your vitals soar.

Linux Pirate posted:

Maybe I missed it, but what are the carnivore animals supposed to eat if they live side by side with herbivores?

Human Beings.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 04:29

FunkyAl: Mar 28, 2010; Your vitals soar.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Handling of fictional race relations in sci-fi or fantasy settings tends to be incredibly fraught at best. (see the Avatar thread) The allegory in Zootopia ends up at best confused, and maybe more sexism than racism, but honestly I don't think the writers even knew.

Funny thing is that they basically fumbled with what furry webcomics have been dealing with for decades plural at this point.

Dreaming of Zootopia

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 13:59

FunkyAl: Mar 28, 2010; Your vitals soar.

Humans have filled a city-size zoo with genetically engineered superintelligent animals and are running it as a giant experiment to solve racism

# ¿ Sep 19, 2020 14:58

FunkyAl: Mar 28, 2010; Your vitals soar.

Barudak posted:

Parodies of the Godfather should have been officially done back when they made the extremely forgettable "The Freshman", a film where Marlon almost literally cashes in on the Godfather, in 1990

Agreed. He should have looked like Dr. Mareau

# ¿ Sep 21, 2020 20:07

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 07:19

FunkyAl: Mar 28, 2010; Your vitals soar.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

The population of wild mammals on Earth is currently estimated at 130 billion - and that would obviously be much higher in a world where apes never evolved and there are no domesticated mammals like housecats or cattle. I�d say 200 billion is a very conservative estimate of the mammal population living before the spontaneous, simultaneous emergence of symbolization and hyperintelligence in literally all mammal species.

Zootopia is based on NYC, but roughly six times larger. If we assume from this that the world population of speaking mammals is also six times that of humans, then we get a total population of less than 50 billion people.

The 75% drop implies that the emergence of language was catastrophic disaster - effectively an extinction-level event - and it likely corresponds with the disappearance of megafauna species like the giant sloth, wooly mammoth, and so-on. Those are mammal species that, in our reality, were presumed to have been hunted to extinction by tool-using hominids. In the film, though? Well, you don�t develop industrial-scale farming of fish and birds overnight.

Possibly, could Zootopia be the size of cleveland or sacramento on some sort of super earth the size of jupiter

# ¿ Sep 25, 2020 07:08

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