Hoppers, the new Pixar Animation Studios film, begins by teasing one type of story—a heavy-handed environmentalist tract, with clear NIMBY sympathies, in which animals are good, and humans are bad—that I was dreading. But the film moves into something different, better and crazier. I was won over and newly hopeful that Pixar is committed to making bold creative choices beyond safe sequels. The film was directed by Daniel Chong, best known for creating the TV series We Bare Bears, and as a senior creative exec with Pixar.
The premise of Hoppers is that Mabel (voiced by Piper Curda), a young college student, frees animals from medical research labs, and protests the construction of a new bridge that threatens a beaver habitat. This puts her at odds with the politician behind it, Mayor Jerry (voiced by Jon Hamm). Mabel discovers and steals a proprietary technology that allows humans to teleport their consciousness into those of animals, and if you thought that sounded just like the premise of Avatar, the film acknowledges that and moves on.
Once Mabel assumes a beaver identity, the film comes alive, establishing an animal kingdom with distinct and intriguing alliances and politics, which recalls corporate cousin Disney Animation Studios’ Zootopia films. In animal guise, she befriends the Beaver King (voiced by Bobby Moynihan), and within minutes, has become his protege and successor. But other animals, it turns out, are more vicious than the most vile of humans. The animation is strong, the character work is well-done, and there’s a musical number, which Pixar almost always avoids.
The story gets more batshit in its second and third acts—shark assassin—and at one point turns into a homage to The Hidden, with a malicious entity wearing the face of a political candidate. With a lot of recent Pixar movies, most notably last year’s Elio, we eventually get the backstory of the project’s behind-the-scenes turmoil, and how the film’s plot was re-written on the fly. I haven’t read stories of that kind yet about Hoppers. But if Hoppers at some point evolved from an earnest environmental fable into what it ultimately became, that change was for the better.
The other big animated film of early-2026 is Goat, an inspirational sports cartoon produced by NBA star Stephen Curry, and based loosely on his own rise. Goat probably had its origins in Curry wanting to make himself a Space Jam of his own, along with a pun of GOAT, along with an actual goat. Curry’s not the first to do this; former Patriots receiver Julian Edelman wrote a children’s book a few years ago in which the Tom Brady character was a goat. The premise is that in an all-animal world, the big sport is an all-animal version of basketball called roarball. The sport favors larger animals, like panthers, rhinos, and horses, but the hero, a goat named Will Harris (Stranger Things actor Caleb McLaughlin), dreams of joining them. Like the real Steph Curry, he’s smaller than most of his competition, and also like Curry, he takes advantage by making long-distance shots with historical accuracy.
The plot is the familiar and cliched sports underdog story, but it adds a few unique touches: The sport’s coed, so the arrogant athlete character, Jett Filmore, is a female, voiced by Gabrielle Union. Also, the animation is creative. I especially enjoyed the renderings of the basketball arenas, one of which is engulfed in fire, and another that’s plagued with falling stalactites.