Hoppers (2026) Review

https://youtu.be/PypDSyIRRSs?is=WKS9iwgjZivER2z_

“This is nothing like Avatar!”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

It is one thing to love something so much you don’t want it to change one bit but sometimes, good things aren’t meant to last like so.


PLOT


2026’s Hoppers follows a young lady named Mabel Tanaka who has had compassion for animals since she was a child that at one point tried to free class pets from cramped habitats. Growing up with her grandmother, she learned to appreciate the wildlife near her local glade. Now as a young adult about to graduate college and her grandma recently passed away, she continues caring for the glade to the point of being at odds with Beaverton’s Mayor Jerry Genearazzo who wants to build a beltway through the area. Unable to get enough petition signatures to campaign against it, she finds her biology professor Doctor Sam and assistants Conner & Nisha (Sam Richardson) experiment on their titular program that allows the human conscience to be transferred into a robotic animal body. Desperately wanting to save the glade, Mabel logs into a robo-beaver and escapes Sam’s lab. In the wildlife, she is mistaken to be an actual animal and meets the Mammal King George, a beaver who has sheltered all the glade’s animals in an overcrowded dam due to Jerry planting artificial trees that emit sound waves to drive them away. Mabel is able to take down at least one of them with unintentional assist from Cooper, which leads to animals returning to the glade, until Jerry plants more trees with sound waves and starts using explosives. This leads to addressing the Animal Council full of monarchs of respected groups to address what to do with the threat Jerry imposes. The Council King includes: Bird King which is a goose (Isaiah Whitlock Jr), the Amphibian King being a frog (Steve Purcell), the Fish Queen (Ego Nwoim), the Reptile Queens being a sister trio of snakes (Nichole Sakura) and the Insect Queen being a butterfly. Ultimately, the latter inspires to straight up assassinate Jerry in order to avoid him causing further problems. Mabel of course does not agree with this and considers scaring him away. But when the Queen gets in her face about sticking up for herself that she accidentally literally squishes her and flees. As she and George do so, cover is blown when the animals destroy Nisha & Cooper animal bodies whereas the insect queen’s son Titus assumes control of council. Although annoyed of Mabel’s recklessness, George still chooses to help her as much as possible. Luckily, they get the assist of the slow beaver Loaf (Eduardo Franco), Tom Lizard (Tom Law) and the brown bear Ellen (Melissa Villaseñor) to confront Jerry and force him to call of the beltway route in order to save his life too. As they drive to the glade, seagulls of the council summon the shark Diane (Vanessa Bayer) to devour him, but the protagonist group barely evades death. Because Jerry still refuses to cancel the beltway, Mabel gives her location to both the council and Sam. Just when the latter retrieves her and gets her back to her human body, she ends up fainting. By the time she wakes up, the humans are held hostage by the council, ordered by a now fully pupated Titus to make a robotic clone of Jerry to use the sound trees to massacre humans at the re-election rally being held near the glade. Realizing her good intentions made things worse than ever, Mabel makes amends with the mayor to stop Titus’ plans from succeeding. Jerry logs onto the beaver body to help her escape while Mabel heads to the rally hoping to convince the insect king to change his mind. Jerry also frees Sam and her team by the time Mabel gets there, but Titus reveals to have never cared about his mother, still wanting to do the unimaginable. Jerry and company are able to send him back to his insect body, but he soon logs back in and launches his phone onto one of the sound trees. As he chases back for it, he destroys the robo-beaver body that forces Jerry to return to his body. Mabel reaches the top with him, but safely lands onto a tarp when she can’t get the phone first. Titus then starts a fire when tipping over said trees. When his robo-human body gets destroyed, Amphibian King immediately eats him after he had threatened to kill the whole animal council. With a common enemy taken care of, the whole council helps Mabel put out the fire by dismantling the dam together which in turn floods the glade. After the fire gets put out does an ant queen become Titus’ successor as insect queen and Jerry cancels the beltway route to preserve the glade as a preserved wildlife reserve. Around the time Mabel graduates college, the Hoppers program gets cancelled but Sam hires her to be her assistant. When Mabel visits the glade again, the film ends with her remaining friends with George, communicating via text to speech like she did with Jerry.


THOUGHTS


If there is one thing you got to expect from Pixar is that you’re always going to get a good balance of what a true heartwarming adventure can be and it’s no exception here. The animation is just as great which is a given its legacy, but it’s still so cool to see various animals talking to one another, which leads to hilarious scenarios. I mean you know it’s unserious if a pond rule involves Loaf allowing Ellen to eat him. Then again, it’s quite the imagery to see a shark being carried by seagulls or a human mask being removed off a robot. To me, I think it peaked best when it came to the council assembling for the first time because the colors were just stunning to see put together as shown. I personally identify this as a comedy due to how unserious it is when focusing on the side characters. Loaf, Ellen and Tom were such a dynamic trio I couldn’t get enough of them. Whether it’s trying to practice pond noises with George, messing with Jerry’s phone first or messing around by wearing the Jerry mask in the post credit scene, you know it’s a vibe with them. Apart from that, this movie fits into Pixar’s mold best because director Daniel Chong and cowriter Jesse Andrews are able to not just remind us to appreciate nature, but to teach that true progress of anything will come from collaboration and compromise rather than opposition and radicalism. If you continue to hold back on changing things up, then you’ll only continue to be disappointed with the end results. This is the case when following Mabel because although her compassion is off the charts, it does still lead to a domino effect of consequences that lead to an inevitable compromise. From the young Lila Liu to adult Piper Curda, you do accept it comes from how nature is the one thing she had in common with her grandma, the one person who understood her unlike her parents and when she passed, she made it her sole duty. While it still paid off, she needed to understand sacrifices had to be made in order to find peace in the future. We can relate to how we want things to remain as is because change can be scary, but her desperation to hold onto the past was what was crippling her throughout. There’s no denying she had a great mentor out of Dr Sam since Kathy Najimy portrays her to share similar passion. The difference is she minimizes testing the waters because she knows exponential disruption can go awry and that’s exactly when Mabel rogues accessed the Hoppers program for her good intentions. Having said that, the first true friend she ever had was George because Bobby Moynihan is all about optimism like a true leader, but even he considers meeting in the middle until encouraged to try new things. And that is why the two bond so well because even though he never asked to lead, that never really stops him from doing more than what he’s capable. As she inspires him to do so, he shows her everyone’s got limits to what can be done and had she not ever grasped it, it’s hard to know if they ever met in the middle when it came to breaking the dam to save the glade. Thankfully, their sacrifices led to them keeping in touch despite the language barrier. Considering Jon Hamm would also portray Jerry as a charismatic coward since he didn’t want to admit to being in the wrong until letting go of something the town never needed, hence being an ideal rival for the lead, the true enemy is one who is an elitist in superiority. The legendary Meryl Streep does get the point across in bitter fashion as the insect queen that you sometimes need to play fire with fire in order to get things your way, but it is her son manipulates this idea to craft something much crueler. From young Eman Abdul-Razzak to adult Dave Franco, the prince turned king goes full megalomaniac to the point where’d you’d want to rather run than fight. The fact he didn’t care about his mom dying and just waited for his opportunity to absorb control was enough proof to say he had to be stopped because if you ask me, anyone else from the council would’ve shared similar ideas of a hostile takeover had he not intended to betray them. Because of that plan being spoiled, the council can be in a better direction. This movie was fun to get through, but there are aw few things that came off confusing upon rewatch. Like for starters we all know Mabel’s heart is in the right place to take all the class pets out, but even as a kid, she should know it’d be a bad away to not have at least a set of shoe boxes because they’re all gonna suffocate if not be devoured by the snake considering she shoves them all in the backpack. If then feels weird for the construction crew to be so near the dam before they try to destroy it. I know Mabel intervenes as she’s done before, but they don’t know that. Had they detonated that time, they could’ve struck by some of the debris. Also if George is the resident beaver that moved about according to Sam, Mabel should’ve already known that given she’s at the glade almost all her life. And you know what, Sam should’ve not built a button to disable tracking & communicating because that’s asking to get lost way before Mabel figure it out. Jerry doesn’t even put an effort to hide the speakers on the trees anyone with a drone can spot them. Hell, Mabel should’ve just told Sam and the authorities about the speakers if she wanted to make sure Jerry stopped attacking the glade. And it’s on her to forget humans can’t understand her in her robot body when she had just typed text messages on his phone to speak to him, just as much as how she doesn’t act sooner to remove the docking circle that allows Titus to hop back immediately. On top of that, I’m impressed no one noticed the broken speakers at the council meeting until Mabel brings it out to the table. If that continuity error wasn’t weird enough, seeing Connor choke while in a robo-body will do it for you. I do get the point for an over the top decision being a shark as an apex predator to kill Jerry, but I still think they could’ve gotten something less of a hassle like another bear or a poisonous snake, especially since the latter is what’s used to capture everyone else after Mabel is forced back to her human body. And how long did it take for Titus to figure out how lethal the speakers are? We don’t see them test it on humans, but if he tested it on other animals, that should’ve been clarified. Ignore these issues, then you can still say Hoppers is another hit for Pixar due to still having the right balance of heart & joy throughout. If this animated studio is still your jam, then it’s a no brainer you’ll dig this as well.