So I was talking to one of my friends about Zootopia and Finding Dory. While my friend preferred Zootopia, I preferred Finding Dory. My friend really liked the risks it took to tell its story. I preferred the animation and character elements of Finding Dory. Another friend who agreed with me put it thusly- "I mean, yeah, I liked Zootopia, but I haven't been waiting nearly all my childhood to see Zootopia."
While I agreed to preferring Finding Dory as a movie, I had a problem with this comment. The problem with sequels is that it really relies on that nostalgia factor people had for the first movie. I bet you Finding Dory would still have made a lot of money even if it were mediocre. The fact that it put in effort to be good was almost incidental to this notion of "waiting all your childhood to see something." The Incredibles is different- the ending did kind of tease at a sequel. But Finding Dory did not NEED to exist.
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It makes me sad wondering now if Finding Nemo would have been "too big a risk" had it come out today with its unestablished characters, world, and box office success. Nowadays, nearly every movie is a sequel, a reboot, or a book to movie adaptation. Original stories are few and far between. That is not to say that original isn't ALWAYS good, but when studios rely on name-brands rather than good stories to tell, we wouldn't have the first Toy Story, or Shrek, or Kung Fu Panda, or Wreck it Ralph, or Finding Nemo.
Am I saying that sequels like Finding Dory is bad? Of course not. In fact, in this instance I preferred it. I'm saying that when original content like Zootopia comes our way, we shouldn't try to take it for granted. Our kids deserve originality just as much, if not more, than they deserve childhood nostalgia. Because eventually some kid might say they HAVE been waiting all their childhood to see the sequel to Zootopia. And that's a good thing.
