u/Background-Whole-596

Look I get it. Snakes are animals that have been vilified for centuries and it’s not right. However Zootopia 2 felt like an overcorrection of that. Gary, his family and by extension the other reptiles are portrayed as poor innocent little babies who would never harm anybody. Absolutely none of them have any nuanced character flaws and if they did, it was just played for comedy (like the lizard telling Nick to keep her detached tail). Despite being a pro-reptile movie, Z2 is still very much a mammal-centric movie. Heck, I’ve seen reptile lovers who have expressed disappointment on how the reptiles were sidelined. Meanwhile lynxes are apparently evil irredeemable scumbags, further hammered by Pawbert pretending to be a good guy only to be evil later on.

It especially doesn’t make any lick of sense how a reptile-on-reptile murder would cause the entire reptile population to be exiled. Yeah Ebenezer Lynxley caused and weaponised but doesn’t it seem weird that other mammals were never considered in causing this to happen? Yeah by Zootopia’s centennial those mammals are long dead but you’d think there’d be tension with reptiles and mammals beyond lynxes just like between prey and predator in the first movie.

Speaking of the first movie. Yes the main villain turned out to be a prey animal but it was still grey with how it portrayed its characters from both sides. Lionheart, even with his good intentions, was still selfish and a bad boss who was partially (though not fully) responsible for Bellwether’s villainy, and Nick himself was a flawed character who just needed to be steered in the right direction.

The sad part is, if this movie was as grey as the first movie, Pawbert wouldn’t need to be a villain, Gary could’ve been just as much of a protagonist as Nick and Judy, and the reptiles would have been fleshed out instead of just glorified background characters.

That’s why I ultimately prefer the first movie over the second.

Before you downvote this post and write it off as “click-bait”, please just hear me out.

Both Bellwether and Pawbert are still villains who made the choice to harm others to get what they want. They needed to be stopped and had to be locked up. No one should be excusing their actions whatsoever. They both also have an element of tragedy to their stories.

Lionheart, though not evil, was a bad boss who treated Bellwether unfairly. He was wrong for doing that and I won’t deny this is part of what led to her villainy.

However I’ve seen some posts who suggest she’s actually better than Pawbert just because of that or that she had more justifiable for being a villain. And I can’t help but disagree.

For starters, yes prey animals faced prejudice but so did predator animals too. Nick is already a perfect example of that. So if Bellwether left her job as major assistant, how exactly would she would be worse off than predator animals? Heck, once Lionheart was arrested, she became mayor immediately. Heck, if it weren’t for Nick and Judy exposing her, she would’ve won! This says to me that prey animals don’t really have that bad.

But Pawbert? Even if Pawbert was an absolute saint who did nothing wrong, he would still be forever shackled to the Lynxley name. Remember, his entire family line oppressed an entire race for a century. Pawbert would still be judged his entire life for being related to the family who did this. This isn’t uncommon in real life. If a family member of yours did something truly abhorrent, you would be judged and looked down upon just for being related to them, even if you had nothing to do with it. Plus let’s be honest, I don’t think the prejudice of predators would’ve been erased overnight just because of Nick and Judy.

This isn’t a “Pawbert apologist” post. He’s still a villain who made the decision to manipulate the heroes and continue the Lynxley’s family’s reign of terror. But I can’t get behind the notion that he “had it better than Bellwether”.