ABSTRACT
Whoever animated the character—the credits do not provide animator attribution—was at a terrible disadvantage if he or she wanted to provide a nuanced performance. An actor (or animator) cast as Bellwether theoretically has access to the entire script and would know up front that the character is a murderer with political ambition. The challenge for movie producers is that they really cannot spend more than US 150 million dollars on a movie strictly for kids, and that is how much the major Hollywood studios spend on each film. So what the marketplace winds up with are movies like Zootopia that are partly for children and partly for adults. Especially given the challenges the animators faced, the performances in Zootopia are excellent. Mayor Bellwether's stated objective is to calm Zootopia's residents by making a rabbit "the face of the Zootopia police Department", but this objective does not address a larger problem with the Bellwether character.
