Pixar‘s track record with animated anthropomorphic animals is kind of odd. Early on, it seemed to avoid the concept, or almost consciously steer towards animal characters not normally featured in animated movies. Its first two movies to fully feature animal characters were the insect-featuring A Bug’s Life and the fish-focused Finding Nemo, the two types of animals the recent fully furry world sequel Zootopia 2 went out of its way to show were “okay to eat”. The only other animal stars from the first decade of the twenty-first century from Pixar were the rats from Ratatouille, also an odd choice for an animal star. The goal seemed to be, if they were going to do something as “conventional” as a talking animal picture, they’d at least go for an “un-conventional” animal to do the talking.
More recently, however, Pixar has seemingly preferred variations on human-to-animal transformation. Brave, with magical human to bear transformations, was an early example, though the trend didn’t really start until this decade, with Soul featuring a man stuck in a cat’s body for most of the back half of the movie, Turning Red basically a straightforward furry transformation fantasy, and now Hoppers, which takes a more “science fiction” approach to the human intelligence in an animal’s body. Directed by Daniel Chong, it tells the story of nature-lover Mabel (voiced by Piper Curda), who hijacks a local university’s science project involving transferring human minds into animal robots in order to stop a highway project, becoming a beaver in disguise. I’m not entirely sure why Pixar has suddenly gotten really into “tf me into a …” type stories, but it is a trend I’ve noticed.
(I also don’t get how trendy beavers have gotten all the sudden. Is it dirty, or what?)
Original post written by 2cross2affliction
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