reference

Following a $1-billion-grossing, Oscar-winning smash could have left writer and director Jared Bush and director Byron Howard feeling like rabbits in the headlights, but they seem to have outfoxed the challenge. “Zootopia 2” has already stampeded past $1 billion to surpass its predecessor, and the awards nominations have just begun slithering in. But how did the sequel survive such high expectations, stay as socially relevant as the original and navigate the peril of too many cooks in the kitchen?

“Animation’s a team sport,” says Howard, referring to the sheer number of people who worked on the film over five years. “It’s 700 in the crew, but in this building, it’s about 1,000 and another 300 in Vancouver. So it’s everyone’s collective ideas, saying, ‘Here’s where we can do better.’ So everyone has skin in the game and they all want these movies to be great. It’s an emotional investment.”

The creative team screened “Zootopia 2” for all of Disney Animation multiple times in various stages of development. A feedback system enabled every employee to respond.

Bush says Disney regularly seeks internal reactions after screenings, “but we asked way more direct questions for this one, like at an audience preview. Then we shared that feedback, unfiltered, with the entire building. That allowed people to see that their feedback mattered because you could actually see ideas that came in [manifest] from screening to screening.”

Bush and Howard acknowledge that having that many collaborators keeps the inspiration flowing but also allows fragments of the colossal group brain to sneak into the film unnoticed. Even they aren’t sure where all the in-jokes are planted.

A “story jam” — reminiscent of a TV writers room — was just one of many avenues for collaboration in the making of “Zootopia 2.”

(Disney)

Like its predecessor, the sequel is packed with movie references and animal puns — “A Moose Bouche”; “Gnu Jersey” — and the directors are quick to spread the credit (or blame). “ ‘A Moose Bouche’ — we’ve gotten emails about that one,” says Howard. “Cory Loftis, our production designer, came up with it.”

There’s a “Star Wars” cantina bit, a soupçon of James Bond in the score at a fancy gala and dashes of Steven Spielberg in the camerawork. It’s easy to spot “Ratatouille” when an animal chef is revealed to have a rat under its hat, but Bush asserts there’s a second reference in that moment — the animal declaring “I knew it!” isn’t just any raccoon, but “Raccacoonie” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” That character is itself a “Ratatouille” reference (and, Bush points out, “EEAAO’s” Oscar-winning supporting actor Ke Huy Quan voices “Zootopia 2’s” lead snake, Gary). So it’s a reference coupled with another reference to another film’s reference to the first reference. Whew.

Those Easter eggs, including an extended callback to Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” — the realization of which they credit to animator Louaye Moulayess, a “Shining” superfan — speak to a willingness to cater to audiences beyond kids. Presumably, most children attending “Zootopia 2” haven’t watched Kubrick’s film. That’s a shoutout to the grown-ups for bringing the kids and, hopefully, discussing the historical practice of redlining with them after the show.

Byron Howard, left, and Jared Bush.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The first “Zootopia” was not notable just for funny talking animals but also the fact that the funny animals were talking about bigotry and stereotyping. Perceptive viewers may have noticed a mammalian bias in the original — there were no reptiles to be found in its near-perfect society. It turns out they were discriminated against as a class and denied their rightful place as residents, as we learn in “Zootopia 2.” Bush said that concept fit right in with “continuing this discussion about how we as human beings have a hard time looking past each other’s differences.”

Howard says the diversity-as-strength theme plays out not just in grand terms but also in the dynamic between the two protagonists, Judy (a rabbit, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick (a fox, voiced by Jason Bateman): “Nick and Judy are such different, contrast[ing] characters that are really stronger [together] because of those differences, and that speaks to something we really value, which is differences between each other as a working pair,” he gestures to Bush and himself. “We continue to thrive in that way.”

Howard agrees with the comparison of him and Bush to conductors of a giant orchestra, listening for notes being played just right. He thinks of composer Michael Giacchino “onstage with those virtuosos at their respective instruments; we work with masters all around us, so we have a lot of trust in them.”

However, he admits with all those voices, “Writers have a tough time here because we scrutinize these movies and redo them over and over and over again. Jared is a great example of someone who thrives in this environment.”

Bush, explaining he came from the culture of TV sitcoms and all their constant revisions in writers rooms, says, “We have this amazing luxury of being able to rewrite and rethink and absorb these better ideas over years. It is an extreme luxury.

“There’s nothing else like this in Hollywood that I’ve seen — that level of deep collaboration and iteration. There’s no place I’m ever going to be that I will love as much as this.”

The year was already a debacle for the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass, with multiple stumbles before and after the epic January blaze that obliterated Pacific Palisades, so it was hard to imagine that things could get worse in the closing days of 2025.

But they have.

A blistering Times investigation found that the Fire Department cleaned up its after-action report, downplaying missteps.

In other words, there was a blatant attempt to mislead the public.

And Bass representatives said they requested that her comments in the final minutes of a video interview — in which she admitted that “both sides botched it” in the Eaton and Palisades fires — be edited out because she thought the interview had ended.

Please.

Together, these developments will echo through the coming mayoral election, in which Bass will be called out repeatedly over one of the greatest disasters in L.A. history. We’re a long way from knowing whether she can survive and win a second term, but Austin Beutner and any other legitimate contenders are being handed gifts that will keep on giving.

In the case of the altered report, kudos to Times reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle, who have been trying all year to keep the LAFD honest, which is no easy task.

In the latest bombshell dropped by the two reporters, they dug up seven drafts of the department’s self-analysis, or after-action report, and found that it had been altered multiple times to soften damning conclusions.

Language saying LAFD did not fully pre-deploy all crews and engines, despite the forecast of extreme conditions, was removed.

Language saying some crews waited more than an hour for their assignments during the fire was removed.

A section on “failures” became a section on “primary challenges.”

A reference to a violation of national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter injury and death was removed.

The central role of the earlier Lachman fire, allegedly started by an arsonist, was also sanitized. A reference to that unchecked brushfire, which later sparked the inferno, was deleted from one draft, then restored in the final version. But only in a brief reference.

Even before the smoke cleared on Jan. 7, I had one former LAFD official telling me he was certain the earlier fire had not been properly extinguished. Crews should have been sitting on it, but as The Times has reported, that didn’t happen.

What we now know with absolute clarity is that the LAFD cannot be trusted to honestly and thoroughly investigate itself. And yet after having fired one chief, Bass asked the current chief to do an investigation.

Sue Pascoe, who lost her home in the fire and is among the thousands who don’t yet know whether they can afford to rebuild because their insurance — if they had any — doesn’t cover the cost of new construction. Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, had this reaction to the latest expose:

“To kill 12 people, let almost 7,000 homes/businesses burn, and to destroy belongings, memorabilia and memories stored in the homes — someone needs to be held accountable.”

But who will that be?

Although the altered after-action report seems designed to have minimized blame for the LAFD, if not the mayor, the Bass administration said it wasn’t involved.

“We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report,” a spokesperson told the Times. “We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”

Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times she noticed only small differences between the final report and an earlier report she had seen.

“I was completely OK with it,” she said, adding that the final report “did not in any way obfuscate anything.”

Well I’m not OK with it, and I suspect a lot of people who lost everything in the fire feel the same way. As I’ve said before, the conditions were horrific, and there’s little doubt that firefighters did their best. But the evidence is mounting that the department’s brass blew it, or, to borrow a phrase from Bass, “botched it.”

As The Times’ David Zahniser reported, Bass said her “botched” comment came in a casual context after the podcast had ended. She also said she has made similar comments about the emergency response on numerous occasions.

She has made some critical comments, and as I mentioned, she replaced the fire chief. But the preparation and response were indeed botched. So why did her office want that portion of the interview deleted?

Let’s not forget, while we’re on the subject of botching things, that Bass left the country in the days before the fire despite warnings of catastrophic conditions. And while there’s been some progress in the recovery, her claim that things are moving at “lightning speed” overlooks the fact that thousands of burned out properties haven’t seen a hammer or a hardhat.

On her watch, we’ve seen multiple misses.

On the blunderous hiring and quick departure of a rebuilding czar. On the bungled hiring of a management team whose role was not entirely clear. On a failed tax relief plan for fire victims. On the still-undelievered promise of some building fee waivers.

In one of the latest twists on the after-action report, Tchekmedyian and Pringle report that the LAFD author was upset about revisions made without his involvement.

What a mess, and the story is likely to smolder into the new year.

If only the Lachman fire had been as watered down as the after-action report.

steve.lopez@latimes.com