Happy Feet Two meets the criteria of the Enviro-Toon well. It shows us scenes of Ramon (Robin Williams) struggling to escape an oil spill and watch the spill flame up in a spectacular oil fire. It also explains The Mighty Sven’s (Hank Azaria) dilemma to introduce the film’s central conflict, the negative repercussions of global warming. Sven has lost his icy home to global warming. With warming temperatures, the ice melted, revealing open waters and green grasses that are uninhabitable to puffins.
The Emperor Penguins face a similar plight when rising temperatures cause glaciers to break off or “calve,” isolating them in a large crevasse encircled by icy walls. Although the film suggests that the solution to this disaster is cooperation (working together to collapse a wall, so the penguins can relocate), the green patches showing through snow and ice tell a different story: climate change is stealing these penguins’ home.
Unlike the original Happy Feet, humans’ attempts to help the penguins fail. Instead, penguins and their puffin friend are left alone to adapt to a changing landscape caused by humans. Despite the weak link additional characters like Bill and Will Krill (Matt Damon and Brad Pitt) provide, Happy Feet Two succeeds as an enviro-toon and an illustration of the everyday eco-disasters (externalities) associated with obtaining and overusing our resources to meet our basic needs.
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