“With This Collar, Zootopia Accepts Me”: How Zootopia’s Early Draft is a Neo Noir

Samantha Shapard
Noir Film and Novel
Michael Sinowitz
December 15, 2017

“With This Collar, Zootopia Accepts Me”: How Zootopia’s Early Draft is a Neo Noir

Zootopia. A place where anyone can be anything. Except, sometimes, for predators. I firmly believe that an excellent movie to add to our course if given the extra week would be the 2016 animated film Zootopia. The finished film itself certainly contains many noir qualities, most obviously the message that true justice cannot be brought from an established authority. However, if focusing on this work for our course, I would propose that we focus much more on the earlier drafts of the movie… a world that I will henceforth refer to as Zistopia. In these drafts, predators were blatantly discriminated against to the point where they were forced to wear taming shock collars to make the prey feel safe. A direct quote from these early drafts of the movie states that, “When a predator gets agitated, the tame collar reminds them to be good”. But who gets to choose what good is? In the ultimate power shift, the prey animals of Zootopia have beaten predators down and degraded them, forcing them to wear collars that shock them whenever they get too emotional, breeding a world of apathetic animals. At children’s taming parties where they receive their collars, they are forced to recite the phrase, “with this collar, Zootopia accepts me”, an implication that seems disgustingly cruel. Zistopia was undoubtedly a dark work of noir, ultimately changed to be more optimistic because early viewers of the film who watched clips during screenings stated that they disliked the world so much that it was impossible for them to enjoy the film as a cartoon. I would argue that despite the common view of Zootopia as a funny animated feature, a study of the film Zootopia and its early drafts would fit in perfectly with our course, with Judy Hopps as the hardboiled detective, Nicholas Wilde as the femme fatale, and the world as a place even darker than most noir portrayals of Los Angeles. Ultimately, viewing Zootopia as a work of noir can demonstrate how noir has impacted American culture in ways that we wouldn’t even expect, with its influence spanning from live action movies all the way to cartoons intended for child audiences.

            There can be no doubt that the Judy Hopps of Zistopia is hardboiled. She’s very brisk and to the point, and hunts Nick down with little regard for his own feelings. Part of what makes her like this is her family history: in a household crammed full of bunnies, her parents often forget her name, and she’s constantly struggling to prove herself. However, what makes her so interesting is both that she’s actively involved in a governmental organization- the police- and that she actually experiences change by the end of the movie. Unlike most hard-boiled detectives, Judy realized that she’s wrong and that she’s been treating predators badly. Judy also works as a member of the police force and follows orders given to her from higher ranking officers, until she realizes how corrupt they are and starts doing things her own way. Judy and Nick, the femme fatale, also form a legitimately good relationship with one another, where they trust each other and even start up a new ‘Wilder Times’ theme park at the end of the movie. Despite starting out just as hardened and cold as other hardboiled detectives, full of bias and hatred of predators, Judy experiences real change throughout the movie, and comes out the better for it. While she has a shocking moment of realization that the police she’s trusted are actually unwilling to bring about justice for Nick and the other predators, once she outs the bad animals, Judy is willing to stay on the force as a new sergeant. No other hardboiled detective we’ve seen has been willing to not only work with the police but actually be a member of them, which ultimately makes Judy Hopps a fascinating character study. Despite what might seem a common belief in noir- that the police are corrupt and all members of the police force are dishonest, Judy Hopps is able to bring about true justice despite her associations with this governmental department, showing an new and unique side to the hardboiled characters of other noirs.

            If Judy Hopps is our hardboiled detective, then Nicholas Wilde must find some other role in the noir narrative… the femme fatale. Obviously, a few exceptions must be made: Nicholas Wilde is not femme, and he almost seems to follow the femme fatale narrative in reverse. Close to the beginning of the movie, he finds himself in jail, and he finds himself growing closer to the hard-boiled detective as the plot progresses, not the other way around. Nick also has no pretenses about pleasing Judy for most of the movie: in fact, he actively dislikes her. However, if we look at what our key description of a femme fatale is, we come to see how Nick fits into this description. The femme fatale is “a danger to herself and others”, as we’ve stated, and undoubtedly Nick is a danger. He winds up messing everything up for predators both through his creation of the illegal predator theme park Wild Times, and his later sleuthing work with Judy Hopps. The more he tries to fix things, the more he makes life more difficult for the predators of Zootopia: culminating in Mayor Swinton’s planned announcement that all predators should be banished, a statement that never would have come about if Nick hadn’t caused so much trouble. Nick also blatantly displays the smooth talking abilities that many femme fatales have. He is able to grin his way out of many situations, and his charm is how he managed to stay out of jail for so long in the first place. The relationship between Judy and Nick also confirms his role as the femme fatale. The pair have a lot of the same witty banter as is common between the detective and the femme fatale, and Nick is frequently seen as a ‘bad animal’ in comparison to the good police-bunny Judy. A key difference separating Nick and the femme fatales of the past is, of course, the fact that there’s no romantic undertones between the pair. While Nick is very charming and suave, he isn’t particularly trying to seduce Judy, and the two don’t end up in a romantic relationship of any sort. However, I would argue that this just makes Nick a different sort of femme fatale, and it doesn’t completely exclude him from the character archetype. If we look at femme fatales as being just a danger to themselves and others, there can be no doubt that Nick fits that description, regardless of how sensual he is.

           

            Returning to our discussion of the world of Zistopia itself, it can be hard to even find the worst place to start. The entire context of the story is built on an idea so vile that it can be hard to believe that the filmmakers continued with it for so long. In an early scene, prey police with actual clubs slam Nicholas Wilde into the hood of a police car. The mayor states to Judy Hopps that “Hurting predators is an okay thing, especially when it helps for prey to remain in control.” Nicholas Wilde has to borrow the money for his theme park from a mob boss who threatens to kill him, and there’s also an entire scene that takes place in a bar. None of these settings or features of the film lend themselves to an animated Disney feature. In a clip from the drafting sessions of the movie, a man conceded that watching the early drafts of the movie really just felt like watching a film that was “about a guy who doesn’t wanna go to jail”. Despite the fact that this doesn’t feel very Disney, the setting of this film does lend itself to another genre… a noir. The shady dark aesthetic provided to this film, along with its dark meanings about society fit in perfectly with other works like The Maltese Falcon. Not to mention the fact that, despite the fact that there’s no death in this film, it almost resonates as being more depressing. While most noirs feature characters that are unhappy with their role in society, none of the others we’ve looked at really have characters that are actively being punished for behaviors they can’t even control.

           

            Despite the dark nature of this film, it is definitively an animated feature, which drastically separates it from the other noirs portrayed in this class. Also, most people don’t think of the shock collars when they think of Zootopia. The finished film was certainly a lot different from its earlier drafts, and people might not be inclined to view it as a noir due to their bias against it. However, all of these reasons are why I think it’s so important to discuss Zoo/Zistopia in a noir context. It proves that noir is a cultural phenomenon that has even influenced the world of animation. It also provides great insight into examining why the filmmakers felt the need to ultimately change the plot to make it more docile, and what that says about noirs as a whole. We’ve already established in our class that noirs are incredibly dark and twisted. The fact that even this lighter version of noir without murder or sensual romance was forced to be censored in order to make it appealing to its audience is very interesting and a subject that would provide a great class discussion. Zistopia also contains many noir elements that we’ve actually seen throughout other works, like its femme fatale, hard-boiled detective, cynical view of society, and, ultimately, its realization that the police are unable to bring about justice. In both versions of the film, Judy is forced to branch off from the police force, breaking off her childhood dream as she realizes that just because the police are idolized and can do wonderful things doesn’t make them perfect. Much like in almost any noir, Nick and Judy realize that in order to bring true justice to Zootopia, they’ll have to take matters into their own hands and fix the problems themselves. Not only that, but the film also matches the visual style of noirs, with early concept art showing the animals in shady trench coats, hoisting guns in dark alleys. I firmly believe that viewing Zootopia and its earlier drafts as a noir can only expand our knowledge about noirs as a whole, and just how much they’ve infiltrated everything in our society… spanning from all the way from Paramount in the 1940s to modern-day Disney animation.

Supplementary Photos:

This is the scene in which the sheep-police with clubs slam Nick onto the car

These are some early concept pictures that really show the noir style:

And finally, a shock collar in action!