One of the many reasons I’m excited about Zootopia is that it not only tells a good story, but tells it well.  Zootopia brings a wonderful quality to its writing and narrative, making things flow smoothly, seem believable, and reinforcing and enhancing the story line itself.

To that end, the scene with Nick and Judy’s playful “Are you just trying to steal the pen?” is not only awesome in its own right, it’s also a great callback to the scene with Gideon and the tickets earlier in the film.  Even better, it starts a string of brilliant callbacks that lead all the way up to the conclusion.  These callbacks show the delicious narrative tightness wrought into the story, with each closing bracket providing an amazing bookend that not only completes things from a storytelling perspective, but also shows the journey Judy’s been on and how much she’s grown and transformed.

Huge props to the Zootopia writing team for crafting this.  Great storytelling craft is not a given in movies these days, and I applaud the team’s dedication to the art.

 

For more writings on Zootopia, head to The Zootopia Meditations