One big thing that Zootopia got right that so many other talking-animal movies get wrong was that they limited it only to mammals.
This eliminates the question of what the carnivores/predators eat. If the birds and fish and reptiles in your fictional world are also sentient, feeling members of society, then you have to wonder how any meat-eater survives without basically being a mass murderer.
Yes. And the predators going savage and mauling the "prey" was a big problem. That's bad. You can't just run around killing antelope or koalas on account of the fact that you need to eat meat to live.
But if the birds and fish and mollusks and bugs in this universe are still "just animals," then you don't run into the problem of, well what do the predators eat, then? They eat the birds and fish and mollusks and bugs.
Sing came out about the same time as Zootopia, and even my 8 year old at the time asked me what the lions and dogs were supposed to eat, because in that movie even the damn squids and snails are singing and dancing their way across the stage. A dog has 2 choices: starve to death, or commit murder 3 times a day.
They already established that fish aren’t sentient in this world. There’s fish markets in the 1st film and a clip of the 2nd film shows animals eating fish.
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u/DerCatzefragger 2d ago
The snake is a mistake.
One big thing that Zootopia got right that so many other talking-animal movies get wrong was that they limited it only to mammals.
This eliminates the question of what the carnivores/predators eat. If the birds and fish and reptiles in your fictional world are also sentient, feeling members of society, then you have to wonder how any meat-eater survives without basically being a mass murderer.