In a hidden Colombian valley, the Madrigal family's magic house grants every grandchild a power except Mirabel, who sets out to learn why the magic is failing. Directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard built the story from a research trip through Colombia, with Lin-Manuel Miranda's songs doing the work of introducing a dozen major characters.
Lilo & Stitch follows an orphaned Hawaiian girl who adopts what she thinks is a stray dog, not realizing he's an escaped, genetically engineered weapon being hunted across the galaxy. Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, the film cost $80 million, grossed $273 million worldwide, and won an Annie Award, building its story around the Hawaiian concept of extended family rather than a generic redemption arc.
Judy Hopps, the first rabbit on the Zootopia police force, partners against her will with Nick Wilde, a fox con artist, to solve a missing-mammal case that exposes prejudice baked into the city's design. Byron Howard and Rich Moore's Disney feature restructures a buddy-cop plot around predator-prey tension, using new fur-simulation software and years of zoo research to render a mammal metropolis that looks, and argues, like it was built for its inhabitants rather than around them.