Can someone help me understand what is the initial inequity in Zootopia and how it started the injustice in the story.
Before the story actually starts, Zootopia is in a “balanced inequity” where predators and prey live together and everything is mostly fine for now. But everyone has these unresolved prejudices just below the surface, which are ripe for being exploited.
It’s been a while since I saw it … I don’t think the First Story Driver (the Action that throws everything out of balance) is actually shown in the film. I think it must be when Bellweather begins infecting predators with the evil toxic flower stuff.
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Thank you!!! That helps a lot. I wasn’t sure if there could be initial drivers that occur not shown in the film or explicitly told in the story. I kept trying to figure it out from within the film, and understood Officer Hops going to Zootopia kicked off this story (if she never left her Bunny Burrow there wouldn’t have been this particular story) … but couldn’t see how that alone could be held accountable for the story’s imbalance, Thanks for the explanation and for your time. It helped.
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Since Zootopia’s Story Limit is broken, then based on what Chris says above, it may be possible that the second Optionlock introduced through Bellwether’s scheming may have contributed to the unclarity in the Story Drivers. I wonder if, when he said that the Initial Story Driver was when Judy entered Zootopia, Chris was trying to take Bellwether into account or not, since the second Optionlock is outside of the scope of the story Zootopia initially sets out to deliver, with the Optionlock of the missing predators. I think that if the second Optionlock was kept within the other limit, like @jhull suggested, the Story Drivers would be clearer. What do you think?
Edit: Jim also says that the Initial Story Driver is the disappearance of the predators, which seems to be very close to what @mlucas said.
Sources: Why I'm weak on Story Limit
https://narrativefirst.com/analysis/zootopia
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Regarding that, I was thinking : is Zootopia’s Story Limit really broken ? As you said the Optionlock concerns the missing predators but by the time they are returned to Zootopia, they aren’t themselves. They are savages (as mrs Otterton put it, it isn’t her husband that she’s seeing). So it suggests that although they aren’t missing physically anymore, they are still missing mentally. In that case the Optionlock and the story are brought to an end when mrs Otterton and her husband reunite for good, aka when the predators are cured from the effet of the Night Howlers. I believe it would fit with the overall theme of overcoming prejudice and learning how to live together, what do you think ?
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Here’s what Jim says in his analysis: “Authors can set all kinds of diminishing options and dwindling clocks within the context of storytelling and not affect the overall meaning of a story. What they can’t do is set up a Story Limit, and then disregard it as if it never really mattered. This is what Zootopia does. … They set up the original Optionlock of the missing predators, but the moment they find Emmet Otterton and end their investigation the story is over. At least, that was the promise the authors made to the audience during the first Act.”
Interesting. I’m not certain if “being missing mentally” would fall under the original or second Optionlock, but it I think it’s under the latter since Bellwether infecting the predators, and therefore the predators not being themselves, appears to fall under it.
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@Rachel_Blot
I always saw it the way you did. Finding Mr. Otterton isn’t the same as returning Mr. Otterton to his wife. It’s not enough to just find him and send him home in his savage state. He has to be cured first.
Would it make any difference, I wonder, to point out that the 48 hour Timelock seems to be about Judy’s MC story rather than the OS story. Judy’s story is about the activities of being a police officer and she has 48 hours to show that she can be a police officer. The OS is about prejudice against predators and that isn’t completed until they figure out how to bring them back from their savage state.
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Sorry, my mistake. I was referring to the second Optionlock that was introduced after the first Optionlock ended, which was surrounding Bellwether’s scheme, not the Timelock that Chief Bogo set. (Fixed in the other posts.)
What do you mean by the second Optionlock? Are you looking at Optionlock 1 as finding the missing animals and Option lock 2 as uncovering Bellwether’s plot?
Yes, although I’m not certain what the options for Optionlock 2 are, since they’re not mentioned in Jim’s article nor the User’s Group.
Gotcha. I was thinking of them as separate options within the same Optionlock and it all deals with the Zootopians overcoming their fears and prejudices of the predators. As in Option 1, find the missing animals. When that fails to ease the city’s fears, go to Option 2, discover what’s making the predators go savage and restore the animals back to their non-savage states.
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