'Zootopia' - Billion-dollar grossing film named at Oscars

Known as Zootropolis in Europe, Walt Disney's billion-dollar hit beat out many other contenders in the same category to win Best Animated Feature at the 89th Academy Awards.

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'Zootopia', as predicted by many prestigious experts, has become the best animated film of the year.

Zootopia can be said to be an “expensive” animated film in many aspects, notably in terms of the number of directors. The film required three directors (including two official directors, Byron Howard, Rich Moore and a co-director/screenwriter, Jared Bush) for directing, sketching ideas and editing. The film achieved great success at the box office, earning nearly 7 times its production budget and was also highly praised by many experts.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received 98% positive reviews from critics with a score of 8.1/10. The film also received a similar score with nearly 270,000 votes on IDMB.

Zootopia, the “sister chicken” of Moana, Finding Dory has won most of the big and small awards in the world. Although the film lost to Travis Knight’s Kubo and the Two Strings at the 70th “British Oscars”, with the victory at the 74th Golden Globe Awards and this Oscar, the film has proven its “stature” in the animated film genre this year.

Making a splash from the race for the 5 best animated films of the year

Released in March 2016, the work of the “Mouse House” could not boast of its own genre when in the following months, the animated film genre continuously produced works that were equally excellent. Of the 5 nominated films this year, The Red Turtle by director Michaël Dudok De Wit and My Life as a Zucchini by director Claude Barras could hardly surpass Zootopia in terms of filmmaking techniques as well as the irresistible excitement of this film (not to mention the content).

As for the two works Moana by directors Ron Clements, John Musker (Chris Williams IX and Don Hall as consultants) and Kubo and the Two Strings by Travis Knight, the way of exploiting the theme is not as universal as Zootopia, although the filmmaking techniques are not inferior.

Zootopia is an animated film for everyone, from children to adults. The film is a never-ending creation of imaginative minds and at the same time, the film is highly allegorical.

Zootopia reflects the modern human world through a city full of animals. At the same time, on the common ground of 5 films, Zootopia is a film with unlimited open amplitude in terms of content. The film's script was written by Jared Bush, Phil Johnston and this script does not stop at any theme, or even if it does, besides the main theme, there are still many supporting sub-themes, creating layers of deep meaning for the film.

The film is a grand picture of the modern world of animals, in which it builds many typical characters with very distinctive personalities. Among the nominated films, Zootopia won the critics' hearts because the film pays a very careful homage to the 1972 classic The Godfather without being forced or excessive.

(From left) Directors Byron Howard, Rich Moore and producer Clark Spencer receive the golden statue when Zootopia was named Best Animated Feature Film of 2016.

Zootopia, the pride of the "Mouse House" in 2016

According to statistics released by Walt Disney Entertainment, in 2016, the group earned over 7 billion USD in total global box office revenue. The movie Zootopia is among the movies that have reached the milestone of over 1 billion USD in revenue of the "Mouse House". This is the highest-grossing animated film of 2016, only after its "brother" Captain America: Civil War.

In terms of art, the film is a breakthrough in terms of visuals, special effects, storytelling and character development for the animation genre. However, to achieve these things was not an easy task for the film's creative team.

The stages of character creation in Zootopia (from top to bottom and from left to right): Storyboard (a form of simulating a script by drawing on a whiteboard) – Layout (a form of arranging the frame layout) – Animation (animation stage) – Final (the final stage after processing through VFX techniques)

To bring the characters to life in the film, the film's visual effects supervisor, Scott Kersavage, shared that it was a difficult job. He and his visual effects team went on a trip to supervise animals in the real world to portray the characters in the film more realistically.

“We surveyed mostly animals in man-made parks and a lot of wild animals… We went to places where we could get as close as possible to the animals. We also went to the History Museum,” Scott Kersavage shared.

In total, the film crew included 64 different species in Zootopia, from small rodents to mammals, large predators and large animals such as camels, giraffes, elephants, hippos... With these 64 species, they created about 800,000 different character models.

In the smaller details of the characters’ bodies, such as fur, the film’s special effects team worked day and night to bring the fur to life using sophisticated VFX techniques. The characters with the largest amount of hair were the rabbit officer Hopps and the cunning fox Mr. Wilde, who consumed over 2.5 million hairs. Take a tour through the small details of the film to see that Zootopia is a film with meticulous investment and care.

Zootopia was not nominated for Best Visual Effects like Kubo and the Two Strings, but in terms of visuals, it can be said that the film is very beautiful (both on the surface and the inside). The space of the film Zootopia is very large and has a lot of depth. That is thanks to the talent of the directors of photography Nathan Detroit Warner, Brian Leach, along with the editors Fabienne Rawley, Jeremy Milton.

A big plus for the film is that it has large-scale, epic scenes that easily overwhelm and captivate viewers.

Zootopia possesses beautiful frames through the creation of large scenes in the film.

The appeal of Zootopia would be significantly reduced if the voice acting for the characters lacked famous actors. In the film, Ginnifer Goodwin voices Judy Hopps, Jason Bateman voices Nick Wilde, JK Simmons voices Mayor Lionheart, Octavia Spencer voices Mrs. Otterton... The film ends with a spectacular singing performance by female singer Shakira.

The Mouse House has had a great year in terms of animation and other genres, and Zootopia is one of them. With the resounding success of Zootopia, directors Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush are also planning to release Zootopia part 2.

At the recent Golden Globe Awards, the creators also said that they had enough material and were ready to start making a sequel. But they did not specify when the latest installment would be released. They also hinted at the content of this new film. But in general, Zootopia 2 will delve deeper into the relationship between Hopps the rabbit and Nick Wilde the fox.

According to TNO