Category Highly Opinionated

Hub Hopes and Predictions ver. 2

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Image converted using ifftoany

This is yet another Hub post.

With a new year comes new hopes and predictions for fledgling family network The Hub. Lots of people have them, including myself. Recently I was lurking at Toon Zone forums and came across a thread for this very subject, and I’d like to share my own thought on some of these predictions and hopes.

-First, however, I’d like to blow off a little steam: I feel like I’m the only person on Earth who’s not having a fan-gasm about The Hub’s acquiring Animaniacs. Yeah, it’s nice to see the show on TV again, but I don’t get why so many people on the internet are treating The Hub’s acquisition of this show like the Second Coming. OK, it’s a nice comeback, but come on; it’s not like they’re new episodes. Not that a new A! series stands a snowball’s chance of happening, nor would it be a good thing if it did: An Animaniacs revival would likely have different producers and directors, a different composer (obviously, since Richard Stone has been gone a while), cheaper animation with a 21st century kid’s cartoon design aesthetic (forget TMS, and Startoons is long gone), probably a different tone entirely for that very reason would very likely be made without Spielberg’s backing. Who in the world would want something like that? But yeah, sorry Animaniacs fans, but I just can’t get that excited about something returning to TV that I can watch anytime on DVD for free. And of course, with The Hub’s acquisition of A! comes the inevitable fan-wanking for Hasbro to acquire other Silver Age WB shows like Tiny Toon Adventures and Pinky & the Brain for The Hub. Personally, I’d rather see The Hub carve its’ own niche rather than see it become Kids’ WB! 2.0. While I wouldn’t mind some more shows done in the vein or spirit of A! or TTA and the like, I’d much rather get new shows as opposed to The Hub just acquiring more and more canceled reruns. Again, if I want to relive any of these shows, I can just buy the DVDs.

There, I said it. I feel better. Now, on to the hopes and predictions. Poster’s hopes will be types in italics, my text will be normal.

I would like to see the Hub get Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes who would do better job than X-D, And Justice League/JLU to their network.

Ah, no. That’s not happening. All of the Marvel cartoons are property of Disney now, so you won’t be seeing any of them on a non-Disney owned station. The ONLY reason The Super Hero Squad Show airs on The Hub is because Hasbro produces the toy line. That is the only reason, BTW; anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Yes, with a new Avengers series, Avengers Assemble, which is said to basically be the blockbuster movie in animated series form, coming down the pike, it’s become crystal clear that A:EMH is done, but that doesn’t mean that it’s up for grabs; the show will likely just go into the vaults. Disney would rather sit on a show than let a rival network get rich off of it. The Mouse House killed A:EMH to make room for AA, so they obviously have no plans of letting it run somewhere else.

Justice League/Unlimited is a possibility, though I believe that’s already airing on Vortexx. Whether The Hub or anyone else would be interested in acquiring it likely depends on whether the Justice League movie happens and how well it does if it does manifest. (Warner Brothers has made it clear that the possibility of a JL movie hinges almost totally on how well the upcoming Man of Steel movie performs; if MoS tanks, then there won’t be a JL movie, it’s as simple as that.) Comedy has always been a higher priority for The Hub than action, and personally I’m of the train of thought that The Hub should be acquiring less action cartoons, not more.

Wouldn’t it be great if The Hub got The Kids from Room 402?

Why? Why would that be great? Why would The Hub even want to acquire The Kids from Room 402? What would be their incentive to do that? What would they possibly gain from acquiring that? The Kids from Room 402 hasn’t been seen anywhere since its’ initial run on Fox Family in 1999-2000. Who besides a few internet geeks like us even remembers that show? Let me explain something once again: cable/satellite channels like The Hub don’t acquire shows ‘just because’; there has to be a demand for them and some kind of incentive for said network to acquire them, i.e. a guarantee that they’ll make back the money they spend on such acquisitions. There’s no profit to made in The Hub’s acquiring some also ran cartoon which hardly anyone remembers and hasn’t resurfaced anywhere in 14 years, and no profit = no need or desire on Hasbro’s part to acquire it. Channels picking up shows just to be nice and to make viewers happy may be how it works in Happy Lollipop Land, but here in the real world TV is a business, and like all businesses it revolves around profit. It’s all about the Benjamins, folks; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Rule of Thumb: if you can’t think of another reason for The Hub (or any channel for that matter) to acquire a show besides “I like it” or “I haven’t seen it in a while” or “It existed”, then chances are it’s not in the network’s best interests to acquire it.

How does anyone feel about The Ripping Friends, Coconut Fred’s Fruit Salad Island, Bro ‘Town, Mr. Bean: The Animated Series and Sgt. Frog join the Hub family?

How we feel about these shows joining The Hub is irrelevant, since none of them will be joining the Hub. Allow me address each of these pics individually:

The Ripping Friends: while it did live its’ brief lifetime on Fox Kids, the fact remains that it didn’t resonate with its’ kid audience. Fox had hoped that the fact that Ripping Friends was created by the man who gave us Ren & Stimpy, John Kricfalusi, would be enough to generate interest in the show, but that didn’t happen. Kids just weren’t into Ripping Friends, and at bottom, like Ren & Stimpy before it, the show really wasn’t for kids. When RF finally did resurface, it was on Adult Swim, so it would be severely out of place during the kid-vid hours. There’d be no reason for Hasbro to acquire Ripping Friends unless the network was planning to launch an adult cartoon block, which I actually think it a good idea; there would be finally be a suitable place to put Dan VS.

Coconut Fred’s Fruit Salad Island: Really? REALLY? Are you serious??? Why in the flaming heck would The Hub, or any channel, for that matter, want to acquire Coconut Fred’s Fruit Salad Island?!? Even the average 2-year-old saw this show for what it was: a remarkably weak knockoff of SpongeBob Squarepants which shamelessly ripped off everything from the concept to the setting to the characters to the lead’s buck teeth to the use of voice actor Bill Fagerbakke, and just above public access production values. Why would Hasbro want to acquire a show so painfully lame and heinously unpopular that even Kids’ WB! opted to bury it forever and The Hub would be made fun of for even airing it? You might as well suggest that The Hub start airing Loonatics Unleashed.

Mr. Bean: The Animated Series: Sorry to be the crusher of dreams, but The Hub will not be acquiring Mr. Bean: TAS. Cartoon Network US will not be acquiring Mr. Bean: TAS. Nickelodeon US will not be acquiring Mr. Bean: TAS. NO American cable channel will be acquiring Mr. Bean: TAS. Why not? Because nobody in America besides you is Jonesing for Mr. Bean, that’s why. It’s not for lack of trying, mind you: there were no less than 3 attempts to bring Mr. Bean to the States, a live-action series on HBO and 2 US movie releases: Bean (1997) and Mr. Bean’s Holiday (2007), but none of them set America on fire; the 2 movies were box office bombs (in the US, anyway), and hardly anyone watched the HBO show. Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, Supermans 3 and 4 and Batman and Robin sucked too, but they’re still all based on popular franchises in high demand with viewers; by contrast, The Mr. Bean phenomenon just never caught on here for whatever reason, and again no demand= no chance of profit and no chance of profit = no chance of an acquisition. Personally, when it comes to Rowan Atkinson I’ve always preferred Black Adder anyway.

Bro’ Town: Congrats, you picked a show with even less of a US following than Mr. Bean. Bro’ Town is a cartoon from New Zealand which to be fair, is pretty successful in its’ native country (5 seasons) but the fact remains that most Americans have never heard of it; heck, I didn’t know this show existed before this guy mentioned it, and then I had to look it up on Wikipedia. If you have to inform your viewing audience that a show exists, chances are a network isn’t going to go out of their way to acquire it. Also, based on what I’ve read, Bro’ Town targets a young adult male audience, and The Hub doesn’t really specialize in that sort of thing. Again, not going to happen unless Hub decides to launch an adult cartoon block.

Sgt. Frog: A lot of people have been requesting that this show come to the US, but so far no one’s been biting, and if the big channels like CN and Nick aren’t trying to acquire Sgt. Frog, then I don’t see The Hub making a play for it. It costs money to import shows, and dubbing them costs even more money. Right now The Hub doesn’t have the lettuce to acquire and dub an anime.

Yeah….seein as how action has been given a swift kick on other networks, I say bring on the action. More room for comedy. I disagree. Reminds me of the awesomeness of Jetix/Toon Disney. Now we have Disney X-D. A great blend of “diversity”. Where comedies and action shows thrive. Oh wait. X out that last part…

Two things: First, Jetix basically killed Toon Disney and started the Mouse House on their current idee fixee that their classic shorts library and all things related to it have no place on their channels beyond bumpers between teencoms and edutainment shows for tiny tots, so you’ll understand if I don’t have the same fondness for Jetix that you do. Second, it’s not The Hub’s job to pick up the slack of other networks, let alone cater to one viewer’s personal whims.

You prefer action, fine. But why should comedy get the boot because of that? I don’t want to see The Hub go all-action any more than I’d want to see it go all retro. Why does The Hub have to be all action and no comedy or all comedy and no action? Why can’t it show both? I don’t see the 2 as mutually exclusive; if action is working on The Hub, I welcome that, ride that rocket, baby, but I’d rather not see it take over the channel like what happened with Jetix; and given that 3 of The Hub’s biggest hits right now, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dan VS and the recently acquired and heavily promoted Animaniacs, are comedy, not action, cartoons, I’d say the chances of The Hub abandoning comedy altogether are close to nil. Again, comedy is and always has been higher on The Hub’s priority list than action. Hub already has an action block, so why not a comedy block? Nothing wrong with the channel expanding its’ comedy roster, I say, especially with more comedies geared towards slightly older viewers than the Strawberry Shortcake crowd. Dan VS can’t and shouldn’t be the only older-skewing comedy on the network. There’s plenty of room on a 24-hour channel to accommodate multiple genres.

-Personally, my hopes for The Hub in the coming year(s) are simply that as the channel grows and viewership increases, they’ll show other genres besides Action and Retro some love. (Calm down, Action and Retro fans; I’m not saying that there should be none of those shows on The Hub, just that I’d like to see more shows outside of those genres. Variety is the spice of life, after all.) Hopefully they’ll be able to rely less on older shows and movies and defunct franchises so people will finally stop referring to The Hub as an oldies’ channel. I’d like to see The Hub launch and obtain more comedies, more girl-centric shows and more original series and first-run acquisitions, particularly at night.

Why Y’all Hatin’ on Witch Lezah?

silverstar 2 Comments

As we reach the midway point of The Looney Tunes Show‘s sophomore season, I’ve noticed the hate rants and complaints about the show have diminished considerably. No doubt this is partly due to how the writers and artists have actually listened to viewer complaints about the show and have adjusted things accordingly: they’ve abandoned Jessica Borutski’s original stylized character designs in favor of a more ‘classic’ look, they’ve switched to brighter colors (Bugs is gray again instead of pale lavender!), the writers have upped the slapstick and the visual gags, there are more callbacks to the original shorts, and in general things have just gotten ‘loonier’. (Of course, we still haven’t seen much of Elmer Fudd, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote segments are gone and the Merrie Melodies are on the way out with the departure of Ms. Borutski, but no show is perfect.)

However, it’s not all hunky-dory in the Looney Tunes ‘hood; despite the improvements the show has made, there is one element of TLTS that still continues to raise peoples’ ire. Namely, this lady:

 This harbinger of evil, this blight upon the community, is Witch Lezah, the fun-house mirror version of Bugs Bunny’s Looney Tunes adversary Witch Hazel, here cast as Bugs and Daffy’s no-nonsense witch neighbor and single mother to little boy inside the body of a 9-foot tall giant orange monster Gossamer, voiced by African-American stage, film and TV comedienne and actress Roz Ryan.
While a secondary character on the show itself, there is a surprising amount of hate and derision aimed at this character. The biggest irate questions asked about the Witch are: why is she called ‘Lezah’ instead of ‘Hazel’? Why does she sound black? and Why isn’t June Foray voicing her, especially when June Foray is on the show voicing Granny? One colleague of mine who’s a member of both The Big Cartoon Database and the place I recently moved out of, Toon Zone, is one of Lezah’s biggest detractors, never passing up an opportunity to cast stones at the character and her voice actress. His favorite smack against the character is to call constantly (and I do mean constantly) compare Witch Lezah to Mammy Two-Shoes, the Buelah-esque black maid featured in the early Tom & Jerry cartoons, referring to Lezah as “The Mammy Two-Shoes Witch” and accusing the character of being “an offensive stereotype of a black woman”. His favorite comment (which he’ll spout at the drop of a hat) is: “I think if they decide to bring Mammy Two Shoes back to Tom and Jerry, Roz Ryan would be the perfect voice actress for her.”
Now, I like and respect this guy; he’s a little candid with his views, but he often offers intelligent observations backed by facts and reason, and he does his research so he knows a lot about the animation industry and the people behind it, so I can respect most of what he has to say, which is why I didn’t preface his comments as a Point and Laugh, however, I couldn’t disagree with him more about Witch Lezah. I’ll save my views on his points for later, right now allow me address the other questions people keep asking about the Witch:
  • Why is the Witch called ‘Lezah’ instead of ‘Hazel’?
  • Why does she sound black?
  • Why isn’t June Foray voicing her, especially when June Foray is on the show voicing Granny?
I’ll answer these in reverse order. First, as to why June Foray isn’t voicing the Witch, well, that’s another elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge, but that’s kind of what we do here. Namely, that as of this writing, June Foray is 95 years old. 95. No one wants to face that, but the woman is pushing a century. It’s very possible (and quite likely) that Ms. Foray no longer has the energy and stamina to perform such a lively character anymore, and also WB probably doesn’t want to give Ms. Foray a lot of work to do because it’s not known how much more time she has on this dimensional plane. Note how Granny has been a tad more subdued than her early shorts appearances, and note also how Granny as yet hasn’t had any speaking roles since season 2 started. Regarding why Lezah sounds black, that’s because she’s voiced by an African-American woman, Roz Ryan.
Roz_Ryan_8
Regular viewers probably recognize Ms. Ryan as the voice of Bubbie the whale on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. She also voiced Thalia, the Muse of Comedy on Disney’s Hercules (1997). She has also voiced Cake on CN’s Adventure Time and Wade’s mom on Kim Possible. Among her live-action appearances have been NBC’s Amen (1986-1991), Barbershop (2005), General Hospital (2012) and The Rickey Smiley Show (2012).
As for the name change, I’m guessing that was implemented because LT purists wouldn’t accept anyone else other than June Foray voicing Witch Hazel (though it’s worth mentioning that in Hazel’s first shorts appearance, Bewitched Bunny, she was voiced by Bea Benederet), so the producers established her as a different character altogether, by simply switching the name around–‘Lezah’ is ‘Hazel’ backwards. (Another question I’ve heard more than once is: is there any connection or relation between Witch Lezah and Witch Hazel? I once read on Wikipedia that in-universe Lezah is supposed to be Hazel’s sister and that Witch Hazel herself was supposed to appear on a Halloween themed episode sometime during season 2. Of course it’s worth mentioning that this was posted on Wikipedia, which anyone and their Aunt Gertrude can edit, and said information was promptly removed shortly thereafter, so my guess is that this was nothing but an unfounded and groundless internet rumor.)
Now, on to my friend’s Mammy-Two Shoes analogy. Yes, Lezah’s voice and mannerisms are indeed based on those of a stereotypical Black American woman, but I don’t see this as an offensive ethnic stereotype so much as the writers intentionally basing the character’s persona around that of the actress who provides her voice. Lezah is more or less an animated version of the characters Ms. Ryan typically portrays on TV and movies. It’s no different from how Donkey from Shrek and Iago from Disney’s Aladdin were modeled after their voice actors, Eddie Murphy and Gilbert Gottfried respectively. Now as an African-American, I’m usually the first to point out when something is racially offensive, and I’m not the least bit offended by Roz Ryan’s Witch Lezah, however I do get kind of miffed at my fellow poster’s constant Mammy Two-Shoes comparisons. Is Lezah a tad stereotypical? Yes, no denying that. But I think calling her a Mammy Two-Shoes throwback is taking it a tad too far. And maybe Ms. Ryan could possibly voice MTS, but I can assure  you that a return of Mammy Two-Shoes to the Tom & Jerry-verse is NEVER going to happen. You can file that right alongside of Disney ever releasing Song of the South on DVD in the Never Gonna Happen bin. Now I don’t hate the character of MTS; I can tolerate her appearance in the old T&Js fine, as long as one takes into account when these cartoons were made. African-American women working as domestics for white families were fairly commonplace during the 1930’s through the 1950’s, so such caricatures weren’t considered racially offensive at the time. But a character like MTS would never fly with a contemporary audience today, society has changed far too much for such a character to be socially acceptable in any medium. In fact, the character has recently resurfaced on WB’s Tom & Jerry Tales as the Caucasian Mrs. Two-Shoes, who is clearly the owner of the house and not just a domestic. You’re not going to see Mammy Two-Shoes anywhere ever again, any more than you’re ever going to see Buckwheat on TV again, definitely not the “Otay!” version of Buckwheat, not unless Eddie Murphy decides to start playing him again.
So I say lay off of Witch Lezah, and lay off of the criticism of Roz Ryan voicing the character. Nobody had a problem with Ms. Ryan voicing a short fat Muse or a blue whale, so why take issue with her voicing a green witch?

Out of Fuel

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It looks like we can add another cable/satellite channel to the list of fallen channels which decided to stop being a specialized entertainment network and instead become a sheep that runs the same crap as everybody else. TV’s latest casualty is Fuel TV.

Fuel TV is just the latest channel (after G4, A&E, Bravo, TLC, SyFy, History and several others) to sell out and lose sight of what put them on the map in the first place and instead try to cater to the lowest common denominator by running generic shows that you can see on any other channel, but while most of the other channels have chosen to run reality show garbage, Fuel TV has opted to run nonstop UFC shows in place of variety.

Now I’m a homebody couch potato who’s about as athletic as a sloth on Ritalin, and I admit that I didn’t watch Fuel TV all the time, but I did watch some if its’ shows, and what they aired then was tons better than UFC footage 24/7. I watched The Captain & Casey Show, American Misfits, Stupidface and GKA, and Fuel introduced me to bands such as Bad Religion, Tweak Bird, Damone and The Aquabats, whose videos I saw for the first time on the now late show The Daily Habit.

So I’d like to welcome all surf, skate, motocross an wakeboard enthusiasts to the club; you’re now in the same boat as us geeks and nerds: namely, those who used to have a channel just for them but don’t anymore. Is it any wonder more and more people are cutting the cord and getting their entertainment from the internet nowadays?

What’s All the Hub-bub, Bub?

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Today is October 10th.

If that date doesn’t hold any significance to you, then you’re either not into toys or you don’t receive bonus cable or satellite, because The Hub turns 2 years old today.

Hub Logo

For the uninformed, The Hub is an American digital cable and satellite television channel that launched on October 10, 2010. The channel, which replaced Discovery Kids, is a joint venture of Discovery Communications, Inc. and Hasbro.
The Hub targets a dual audience, young children in the daytime with original and acquired children’s programs, and families at night with reruns of older television sitcoms, dramas and feature films. Veteran television executive Margaret Loesch serves as president and chief executive officer of The Hub. The channel is available to approximately 60 million subscribers.

Since The Hub turns 2 today, I figured I’d give a basic overview of the channel, its’ highlights (and not-so-highlights) and what I’d like to see happen on Hasbro’s brain child in the future.

Among The Hub’s highlights are Dan Vs., Pound Puppies, Strawberry Shortcake’s Berry Bitty Adventures, Care Bears: Welcome to Care-A-Lot, The Aquabats! Super Show!, Family Game Night, Transformers Prime and Transformers Rescue Bots, Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters, the HuBoom! block which features the likes of G.I. Joe Renegades, the Batman and Superman animated series produced by Bruce Timm, Batman Beyond and The Super Hero Squad Show.

But of course THE show that The Hub is known for is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It is an animated television series based on Hasbro’s My Little Pony toy property that has proven not only its highest rated production for the intended young girl demographic, but has also attracted an unexpectedly significant cult following in the teen and adult male and female categories. If you’re unaware of the whole ‘brony’ phenomenon, then it’s clear that the rock you’ve been living under doesn’t offer cable. Of the MLP explosion, one member of Toon Zone had this to say:

I don’t know why

What is going on Why is Transformers Prime coming second To ponies?

More to the point why are grown boys watching it? 

What is this world coming to?

To which I have only this to say:

Madea Shut Up

  1. “Grown boys” makes no sense. A grown boy is a man. If they’re still boys, they’re not done growing yet.
  2. OK, let me get this straight: you’re all flabbergasted that people are watching a show about colorful talking ponies, yet you yourself are a fan of a show about colorful talking robots. Double standard much? Seriously, go back to your glass house before casting stones in a nerd site.

After that verbal runoff, you should be embarrassed…at yourself. You act like if you’re a certain gender, you’re not allowed to like certain things, and once you reach a certain age, you’re not allowed to enjoy certain things anymore. News flash, Skippy: people can like whatever they want! And they don’t have to explain themselves or defend it either. THAT’S what being an adult is, not worrying about if things are “too kiddie” or “too girly”. That’s something a teenager would worry about it. The above remark is something I’d expect an 8-year-old boy to say, not an intelligent member of a discussion forum, and the thing is, I’ve heard from more intelligent and enlightened 8-year-old boys on this subject.

I myself enjoy the Ponies (though I’ve been on a self-imposed vacation from them until season 3 begins, which is said to be “sometime in October”), but my personal favorite show on The Hub is The Aquabats! Super Show! It combines the pure camp of the old 60’s Batman show and Sid & Marty Krofft’s Saturday morning series with wacky slapstick and nerd rock music from one of the geekiest and coolest superhero rock bands out there. (And the lead singer of the band is also the co-creator of Yo Gabba Gabba!–can’t be bad.) If you haven’t seen this show, I urge you to check it out. Cartoon Network really dropped the ball by passing on this show; if they really must have live-action, they could get good live-action like Aquabats!.

Lately, The Hub’s also been scoring style points for their HuBoom! action block, and deservedly so. Where else can one check out Transformers Prime, Superman: The Animated series, The Super Hero Squad Show and Batman Beyond all in one block? While I’m happy that HuBoom! is doing well, I hope this doesn’t lead to Action Overload. I’d hate to see The Hub become inflicted with Jetix Disease. Why not launch a comedy cartoon block to counter the action block? I’d watch that.

Now, I’d like to address what (in my opinion) is the weakest link in the Hub’s chain: their nighttime schedule. Presently the channel devotes its’ nightly schedule to prime time TV reruns of shows such as The Wonder Years, Family Ties, The Facts of Life, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Doogie Houser, MD, ALF, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Sliders, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Lois & Clark: the New Adventures of Superman. Not terrible, I suppose; there’s nothing wrong with “preserving our TV heritage”, but nostalgia loses its’ sting after a while, and let’s face it: some of these shows were garbage when they were new. I don’t watch The Hub at night since I’m not a nostalgia person (especially when it comes to broadcast TV reruns); while I don’t mind revisiting the occasional show from my past once in a while, I much prefer watching new shows. It’s my hope that as The Hub continues to grow and thrive, they can afford more original series and newer and more diverse acquisitions for its’ PM lineup. The 60’s Batman show is a good start, I’d create a quirky alternative comedy block (sort of a less raunchy Adult Swim or a throwback to the old HA! TV network, the precursor to Comedy Central) featuring shows akin to that: shows like On the Television, Mad Movies with the LA Connection, The New Adventures of Beans Baxter, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, Mystery Science Theater 3000/Rifftrax, Stupidface, Clerks: TAS, Daria, Undergrads, SCTV, etc. (Not all of those specific shows per se, obviously, but shows along those lines.) It would finally give Dan VS a proper place to air on the schedule, since it’s really not a good fit alongside the superhero cartoons, and it fits in with the likes of Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears even less.

Finally, someone on TZ suggested that The Hub throw some sort of on-air celebration to commemorate their 2nd birthday, to which I say: Nah, too soon. 2 years is too early for balloons and confetti; lots of channels make it to 2 years. If The Hub is still kicking in 10 years, then it’ll be time to bust out the party hats.

Can a Looney Tunes Movie Not Bomb? Part 2

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As Jason already mentioned in part 1, a new Looney Tunes movie has recently been announced. Now, understandably, people are more reluctant than enthusiastic about this news, especially in the wake of Looney Tunes: Back in Action. But I personally didn’t think that LT: BiA was all that terrible a film. Not a great movie, but not the abomination that so many thought it was. I liked Back in Action; the problem is I didn’t love it. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I’d like to love a Looney Tunes project again.

It’s wishful thinking, but I’d like for this movie to do for the Looney Tunes what Joss Whedon’s The Avengers did for superhero movies. The Avengers was awesome. It was well-done, impeccably handled from Iron Man all the way up to the big team-up film at the end, the cast and crew worked their collective asses off to make that film work, and it paid off. That’s what I’d like to see happen in the next Looney Tunes project. I’m not saying that this Jenny Slate is the one who can deliver the goods, but hopefully there will be enough people behind the scenes who actually care about the characters and aren’t just interested in making a quick buck.

Here’s all that’s known about it right now:

  1. The film is being written by Jenny Slate, a former Saturday Night Live cast member and co-writer of the web short Marcel, the Shell with Shoes On.
  2. The film will be a CGI/live-action hybrid.
Among the more memorable comments I’ve read upon hearing this news was this statement in regards to the latter:
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“For that reason alone, I hope it bombs as bad as LT:BiA. “
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For the life of me, I’ll never understand all of this hate for CGI. I understand if one just prefers hand-drawn animation over CGI, but wanting a new project to fail just because it’s CG? That I don’t understand at all.

It’s sad how some folks allow themselves to get so butt-hurt over the prominence of CG animated movies that quality doesn’t matter to them. You should want the movie to be good. Simply being traditional hand drawn animation doesn’t instantly make the movie good and just being CG animated doesn’t instantly make the movie bad. Refusing to watch a movie or hoping it bombs just because of how it’s made is a really closed-minded thing to do. It’s one thing to be disappointed by the lack of traditional animated movies and another thing to refuse to watch or hope for the failure of potentially good movies because they’re not made the way you want them to be. Wishing for a movie to crash and burn will not bring traditional animation back.

I wouldn’t mind seeing more traditional hand-drawn animated movies myself but films like Meet the Robinsons, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph were still good movies. They showed that the type of animation doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it. CGI doesn’t automatically mean something’s bad and animated movies shouldn’t be shunned or ignored for that reason alone. This mindset annoys me to no end. Quality is what matters, not how something is made. Quality.

Is CG overdone in American animated films? Yes, a little. But who’s fault is that? If one wants to blame someone for the overabundance of CGI over hand-drawn animation in American animated movies, don’t blame the film producers or the movie studios, blame the American movie-going public, because by and large they aren’t going to see hand-drawn animated movies. Studio bigwigs don’t care about how “more artistic” or “more authentic” hand-drawn animation is, they care about profit, and regardless of whether it was the fault of bad writing, poor scheduling, faulty marketing strategies or what-have-you, the fact remains that Shrek and Tangled performed better in the BO than The Princess and the Frog and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, and the Powers That Be take that to mean that CG movies put more butts into seats than hand-drawn features, and that’s why 9 out of 10 animated movies are in CG now. Anyone who wants to see more hand-drawn animated features in the future should show greater support for the few that come out in the present. It would only take 1 hand-drawn feature to rake in Toy Story or Shrek-sized box office numbers for other studios to get dollar signs in their eyes and follow the trend and then we’d see a second coming of hand-drawn animated movies.
Another unique statement I read in response to the news that this film would be CG was this:
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“I don’t (like the idea of CGI Looney Tunes) since I believe Looney Tunes is funnier in 2D because of their expressions they made in the originals. CG characters in my opinion don’t have that many funny expressions.”
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OK, first, not all CGI is 3D. 3D is a visual perspective, not an animation style, and 3D existed long before the creation of CGI. Regarding the “evils” of CG: CG can’t do expressions properly, CG doesn’t look genuine, etc., I have 2 counterpoints to that argument: 1 of them is the Hulk in The Avengers. (Yeah, I guess you can tell I enjoyed The Avengers.) As far as live-action goes, Hulk was made for CGI. There’s no way that the filmmakers could’ve accomplished half of what they did with Hulk if they had just sprayed some dude with green makeup. You need only look at how lame the Thing came off in the Fantastic Four films to see how the producers of those movies should’ve stuck with their first choice and made Thing a CGI effect. If The Avengers’ producers can do what they did with a ‘realistic’ comic book character, then I don’t see how doing the same thing with ‘funny cartoon’ characters would be too much of a stretch.
The other counterpoint I’d like to cite is Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph. The trailers for that movie look amazing. The marriage between the various art styles looks incredible. So CG can do great things if handled professionally by people who care about the product.
 Personally, I honestly don’t care how an animated movie is rendered as long as the end product is good. I don’t see CGI as this great Satan that so many others do; it’s just another way of presenting a story to me, and like all animation styles, I’ve seen good and bad examples of each.  As long as the movie doesn’t look cheap and the characters act like themselves and don’t just spout out buzzwords and fart jokes, and as long as the script is a decent one, I’m all for a new Looney Tunes project, CGI or not.

Take a look at these 3 recent short clips and tell me how “awful” and “expressionless” CGI is:

There. Were those really so bad? If WB made a movie or a TV show like these shorts, I’d watch the heck out of it.

The other (well, one of the other) major complaints I’ve read regarding this movie is the fact that it’s part live-action; in fact, some have questioned why a Looney Tunes movie needs any live-action elements at all? Surely, we could get a Looney Tunes movie with just the Looney Tunes alone, all animated?

Regarding that,  it’s likely that present day Hollywood doesn’t think that the Looney Tunes are capable of carrying an entire movie on their own (especially given their less-than-impressive track record with features as of late), unless said movie were just going to be a compilation of old shorts with original linking material, and there’s no need for another one of those with the majority of the shorts being available for viewing in other other outlets, nor would I personally want see another film like that, as that formula’s been done to death. If Warner Brothers wants to keep the Looney Tunes relevant, they can’t just keep recycling their old material, they have to periodically update themselves and present us with something new which we haven’t seen a hundred times already.

The current mode of thinking in Hollywood is that most established older cartoons need to appear alongside big-name live actors in order to get more people into the box office. Familiarity and big-name stars have always been an easy way to increase box office numbers; folks are generally more inclined to go see a new movie if so-and-so from such-and-such is in it. But if this movie is intended to feature all or most of the core Looney Tunes characters as a group, then this technique can prove to be problematic, as the original shorts directors very seldom, if ever, used the characters all together for a singular story, especially not a feature-length story, save for those aforementioned compilation hodgepodge movies and TV specials, which again consisted of re-airings of the shorts with new linking material. Toss in live actors on top of that and some storyline involving how and why the cartoons and the live humans are together and having to create some sort of conflict for the characters to resolve and you’ve got a huge writing task on your hands, especially considering that you’re working with a set of characters who were never designed to carry out a feature-length plot in the first place.

This is why I think new LT shorts are a better idea than a new feature. Short subjects are what the LT characters were created for, and that’s where they shine. I really don’t think there’s some magic formula that Hollywood has yet to hit on to make a Looney Tunes feature film work; I don’t think the Looney Tunes are suited for feature films at all. A Looney Tunes movie has always been a bad idea and it always will be a bad idea. I could be proven wrong about that (and believe me, I’d like to be), but I’m not betting danger money on it.