Hoppers Has a Murderous Butterfly, a Naïve Heroine, and a Message About the Perils of Political Activism

March 2026

 

Once upon a time...

 

Children’s animated movies had this message...

 

“Some day your prince will come”

 

Well ...not any more...

 

And, yes, I get why that might have been problematic...

 

But now the message...

Is all about your “emotions”...

 

And Pixar seems to be the Therapist’s Favorite Film Studio...

 

Because so many of their films feature emotional crises:

 

Riley’s sad in Inside Out...

And filled with anxiety in Inside Out 2...

Woody has an existential crisis in Toy Story 4...

Then worries he is being replaced by devices in Toy Story 5...

 

So Pixar really leans into the contemporary obsession with anxiety...

 

But Hoppers is more of a warning...

Than a cope movie...

 

Because this is a film about the danger of stirring up white hot political emotions...

 

Bet you didn’t see that coming......

 

And this message is very timely...

For an age filled with political rage...

 

And in the beginning it is surprisingly balanced...

 

Until it isn’t...

 

Its protagonist is Mabel ...

Of course...

Because all heroes in children’s films must now be female...

(See Frozen Moana, and Mulan...)

 

An animal-loving college student...

Who hijacks technology to transfer her consciousness into a robotic beaver...

In order to mobilize the animals...

To prevent a highway from being built through her favorite pond...

 

Of course, this NIMBY project does not go as planned...

But not in ways one would anticipate when they buy a ticket for a children’s movie...

 

And seriously, Mabel...

 

Instead of all that trouble that you caused...

 

You could have just waited them out...

Because if the Big Dig and the California Train to Nowhere are any indication...

Nowadays things never actually get built ...

 

But... no...

 

Mable wants to be a hero...

So she goes disguised as a beaver to try and persuade the Beaver King to come over to her cause...

 

Which means she has to learn “Pond Rules”...

Which appear to mean you get eaten by someone further up the food chain...

Which did strike me as a fairly Darwinian plot point for a children’s movie...

But all the animals seemed to be pretty blasé about it...

 

So whatever...

 

And Pixar... I do have to ask...

 

What were you thinking?

You are the studio that made Ratatouille...

Which is animation at its finest...

 

But you hired Daniel Chong from the Cartoon Network to do this movie...

 

And it really shows...

 

Because all the animals look like what I used to see on TV on Saturday morning...

Sixty years ago...

 

And the film is too long...

The plot balloons until it explodes...

Which undermines its message...

And the jokes are few, lame, and far between...

 

And what is it with snakes in children’s movies these days....

Is there now some kind of DEI for reptiles?

Because they also played a prominent role in Zootopia 2...

 

So I’m starting to get the impression that the studios are trying to rehabilitate the image of these creatures...

 

Now Mabel... the heroine in this film...

Is a Greta Thunberg character...

But with better hair..

A hip girl vibe...and a skateboard...

Who is definitely not on the spectrum...

 

But she doesn’t seem to have much going on other than her activism...

Which ends up being kind of a tell...

 

But more on that later...

 

And a tiny butterfly is the malevolent ringleader of the animals Mabel tries to harness to her cause...

 

Seriously?

 

An insect is what is going to prevent the “evil mayor” from building a freeway through the pond...

 

Now Mabel is the kind of activist...

With a savior complex...

And so like a dog bounding off after a tennis ball...

 

She persuades the animals to unite against the humans..

To prevent the freeway from being built....

 

But that is where things go off the rails...

 

Because after Mabel tells the animals how evil the humans are...

In order to recruit them to her cause...

 

The animals decide...

 

Let’s kill the humans instead...

 

And so start baying for blood and revolution...

 

So Mabel’s cause careens out of her control...

 

And this is where the message of the film comes in...

 

Which is that activism...

When promoted by people who want to feel important...

By attaching themselves to a cause...

That they cast as existential...

 

Can lead to extremism...

That ends up destroying everything around it...

 

And that is a message people on both side of the political spectrum need to hear right now...

 

But Pixar cops out in the end...

 

I guess because this is a children’s movie...

And so it has to have a happy ending...

 

Which is we can all get along...

 

But that is not how these things work...

Uprisings don’t end in compromise...

 

That has to come before the fans are flamed into a conflagration...

 

Because let’s get real...

 

Once that happens...

 

The fire either burns itself out...but only after much has been destroyed...

Or a tyrant comes in and smothers the flames...

 

But I guess that would be too much tough love...

For a children’s movie ...

In an age...

Where so many films seem to be about anxiety...

 

But in the end Mabel gets what she wants...

 

Of course...

 

Because the environmentalist heroine has to win...

 

But much is destroyed in the process...

A lot of which Mabel cares about...

 

Yet at the end of the film Pixar steps on this message...

Because for Mabel the ends did kind of justify the means..

 

And this is no surprise ...

Because Hollywood’s politics only come in one flavor...

 

So although Hoppers would at first seemed to indicate...

That Hollywood is trying to be more balanced ...

 

And move away from its usual Manichean representation...

Of who is good and who is evil...

 

It turns out it this was all just a tease....

 

Because from the look of the trailer that was shown before Hoppers...

 

The new animated Animal Farm...

Takes George Orwell’s allegory about the evils of communism...

And turns it upside down to make the pigs corporate capitalists...

In order to turn Orwell’s story into a critique of capitalism instead of communism...

 

I guess because...

 

That’s what you need to do to get Seth Rogen and Woody Harrelson to sign on...

to make your movie...

 

In between preaching at the rest of us on awards shows...

And traveling on their private jets...

 

​

​

​

​​

 

​

​

​

​

 

                                                      

 

​

 

​​

​​

​​

​

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

​

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

​​

 

​

​

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​​

​

​

 

​

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

 

​

​​

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​​

 

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​

 

​

 

​

​

​

 

​

 

 

 

 

​

 

​

 

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​​