Relationship Spotlight: Judy Hopps & Nick Wilde (Zootopia)

I love Zootopia for its sharp commentary and its inventive imagination, but I also love it for its story.  In particular, I love the characters of Judy and Nick, both individually and in their interactions with one another.  Undoubtedly, two great tastes that taste great together!  (A few spoilers.)

The unlikely partnership is a true tale as old as time (why no, I didn’t immediately watch/squee over the live-action Beauty and the Beast teaser when it came out – why do you ask?), and Nick and Judy fit the bill well.  She’s a chipper optimist who’s straight as an arrow, and he’s a slick grifter with a wellworn jaded streak.  She’s prey and he’s a predator, and while he’s not an especially big animal, he’s bigger than her, which matters in their society.  And naturally, it’s not just their contrasting personalities and social situations that start them off on an uneasy note.  The actual set-up of their partnership is less than idyllic as well.  Judy initially takes an encouraging, if rather patronizing view of Nick, holding him up as proof that not all foxes are bad, only to realize that he’s just conned her.  This makes her put her guard up, but she’s nothing if not tenacious, and when she realizes Nick might have important information in the case she’s working on, she comes back ready for her second round.  Modifying a page from Nick’s book, she blackmails him into helping her.  No surprise, he doesn’t take too kindly to this and spends the first portion of their time together trying to sabotage her.

However, even if it might take Nick and Judy a while to figure it out, we don’t need long to see how well-matched they are.  Both bring different skillsets to the table, one’s strengths often complementing the other’s deficits.  Judy is generally braver than Nick, but she can also be way too eager for her own good, and his healthy survival instinct helps keep both of them safe.  The sideways approach he takes to things can also be more effective at times than Judy’s more direct methods.  Meanwhile, Judy is better at catching flies with honey; when they’re in a tight spot and Nick’s usual insincere charm isn’t working, they’re saved by a chance encounter/random act of kindness that Judy performed earlier that day.  Another of Judy’s invaluable qualities is her determination.  I wouldn’t say Nick is defeatist, precisely, but he doesn’t have Judy’s inherent and indefatiguable belief in himself, and there are plenty of times when Judy’s never-say-die attitude keeps him going.  Nick’s skepticism balances out Judy’s trusting nature, and her talent for dreaming up creative legal work-arounds goes nicely with his street smarts.

I’ve already talked about the ways in which they both come to recognize one another as individuals rather than homogenous stereotypes of predator/prey, but it deserves another mention.  It’s so rewarding to watch these two learn to understand each other, and more than that, to see them become genuine friends.  Neither probably would have ever expected to develop such a strong friendship with someone so apparently different from themselves – Nick because he’s been burned too many times by prey, and Judy because, although she talks a good game about not discriminating against foxes and is mostly honest about that, she still has some unconscious biases that she has to deal with over the course of the movie.  But they do become friends, close friends, and I love how they gradually start to open up to each other.  When they hit their third-act rough patch, there’s real hurt there, which wouldn’t happen if they both hadn’t started to care.  I like that it takes them time to work through it and that they come out stronger for it – so great to see.