The
Laws of Physics in Zootopia Universe
Movies
are created to entertain the audiences. For that reason, they must stay within
the boundary of the audiences’ perceived world to keep the audiences focused within
the universe without breaking their suspension of disbelief. Audiences expect
the fictitious universe that they are watching to behave like the real world where
physics in that universe are not explicitly broken. Therefore, movie creators
have to establish the rules of their world clearly, and consistent for the
audiences to willing to suspense their disbelief. For an animated universe, movie
creators have a wide variety of leeway to mold their world due to audiences’
different expectations for animated and live action movies. For that reason, we
see animated movies consistently push the boundary of believability. This
summer animated block buster, Zootopia, is a great example of how the law of
physics in that universe is greatly deviate from the real world physics. Zootopia
is a crime comedy CG animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios.
In the Zootopia universe, animals are able to stretch and squash their body in impossible
manners, while certain actions are exaggerated and some impossible law of
inertia were bend to fit the story narratives.
In
the real world, a body is able to stretch and squash to a limited degree,
however Zootopia denizens comprise of anthropomorphic mammals are able to stretch and squash their
body to an extraordinary amount. During a police academy training scene, Judy
Hopps, a rabbit and one of the main characters in the movie, is seen doing a
flying kick at her much bigger training partner. The resulted kick causes her training
partner’s face, especially the lips, to stretch out much further than normally
should. The reason for the out stretched face is to show power of the impact
from the kick.
In another scene, Judy meets an elephant doing some impossible
yoga poses while investigating a
missing mammal case. Yoga is supposed to give
the body more flexibility but the poses that the
elephant are doing are beyond
flexibility.
The next scene is calling to the old days of traditional animation
when the head of Nick Wilde, a fox
and a con artist helping Judy with the
investigation, is put into a choke hold. To accommodate the big hand of a polar
bear that choking Nick, his next is stretched and his head is squashed in a
hilarious way.
Zootopia
contains a lot of exaggerated actions. During the same boxing match while at
the police academy, Judy uses the rope to propel her quickly toward her
opponent. We see this type of move happens a lot in cartoons and Zootopia
continues the tradition by using the rope to provide a much weaker opponent a
trump card over the much stronger opposition. What exaggerate about this move
is that Judy is too small to pull it off since the rope tension would be too
much for a light weight rabbit to use as a slingshot.
The next exaggerated action
is the scene when Judy fist bumping with a fellow officer. To play from
the
fact that Judy is tiny compares to her fellow officers, the resulted fist bump
causes Judy and her
chair to slide away. The only way for such slide to happen
is if Judy is glued to the chair and that her
upper body is supper strong.
Other than that, Judy would just fall over from the fist bump.
Another scene is
right after the assistant mayor runs into closed doors, resulting in papers are
exaggeratedly floating to the ground. To make the scene more comical, the
papers are falling to the
ground at a much faster pace that it would naturally.
The previous scenes are a good examples of exaggerated actions but they are
nothing compare to this
scene. Trapped a lock cell with what seem to be no way
to escape, both Judy and Nick flushes
themselves down a toilet.
The
best part of creating an animated universe is the ability to break the law of physic
and Zootopia is filling with many impossible law of inertia actions. To begin,
let visit the boxing scene again. In this scene, Judy kicks her bigger
opponent's boxing hand into his own face knocking him out by propelling herself
using one of the ropes surrounding the boxing ring. Due to Judy’s light weight
and her opponent’s muscular nature, it would be similar to flinging a rabbit
against a brick wall. Judy would be the one who is knocked out instead of the
other way around.
In another scene we see Nick’s con partner, Finnick, carrying
a Jumbo Pop. The Pop is way too big
and heavy for a child size Finnick to hold
without tipping over.
Then on another scene we see that Judy takes too long to
sink into wet cement. During the
conversation she has with Nick, the whole time
she was standing on the wet cement and she doesn’t
sink into it. It only till
it’s pointed out for her that is when she started to sink into the cement. This
is
an example of physic following the story beat.
During the lead up to the
climax, we see both Judy and Nick able to jump from a sliding train
without the
forward momentum affecting them. Due to forward momentum, they should have role
in
the same direction as the train before slowing down.
In
order to make the Zootopia entertaining, the world was intentionally created to
follow the law of the real world up to a certain degree. All of these examples
show how much animated movies can get away with, and the only way for the movie
to suspend disbelief is for the universe of Zootopia must continue to
acknowledge the law of physics that was set for movie and not to contradict it.
Just like real life, fictional worlds must operate consistently within a
spectrum of the physical set of rules that they established. That’s what makes
these elaborate worlds believable, coherent, and worth watching.
