It’s no secret that we here at Twinsanity are big fans of Looney Tunes. This is one of the funnier “one-shots” (shorts featuring characters that never returned) from 1953. A hungry fox tries to raid a chicken coop, but his plans are continually thwarted by a bulked-up, muscle bound rooster. Not much of a plot, but a great story. I remember 18-year-old me laughing my ass off at this short when it aired on Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite. Interestingly, this short was directed by Robert McKimson, who created the Foghorn Leghorn series, yet Foggy is nowhere to be found here. Anyway, here’s “Easy Peckins”:
Tag Looney Tunes
Looney Goons
Today I was searching the internwebz looking for more info on the upcoming Warner Bros. Animation series Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production, set to debut on Cartoon Network in 2015. A poster on a message board I’m on linked to an article about the show on Animation Scoop. I was curious to read what my fellow animation enthusiasts were saying about Wabbit, so I checked the comments page, and to my surprise I discovered that nearly all of the comments were people hating on The Looney Tunes Show. Seriously? To these people I just have 3 words:
Come on, people. It’s been around 6 months since TLTS’s cancellation was announced, and people are STILL passing out Haterade about that show? Was TLTS really that bad? Enough already. I agree TLTS wasn’t great, but it’s done now. Time to move on. We’ve got a new Looney Tunes series on the way, which is set to NOT be a copy of TLTS. Let me count the ways:
- The show will contain 4 shorts per episode. So it’s NOT going to be another sitcom.
- Bugs will be going up against Barbarians, Ninjas, and Terminators. See? Bugs will be outwitting foes again. NOT like TLTS.
- Taz will be featured, but he will now be known as Theadore Tasmanian. He will work in the accounting department and is repressing his true wild and crazy self. OK, this sounds kind of LTS-esque, but it could possibly work. He won’t, however, be a pet like on TLTS.
- Wile E. Coyote is going to be an annoying, know-it-all neighbor. Again, unlike on TLTS. I’m also looking forward to this since Wile E.’s “super-genius” persona has largely been buried in favor of his mute form while chasing the Road Runner.
- Erik Kuska will be producing the show (he was an animator on Looney Tunes: Back in Action). Not Spike Brandt or Tony Cervone.
- The show is staying away from cliches (aka no anvils). Fine with me, as long as there are still some toon style gags and old fashioned cartoon chaos.
So how’s about we give cautious optimism a chance and hope that Wabbit will be worth the wait? WB and CN have moved on, how about we do the same? For all those still butt-hurt about The Looney Tunes Show…
“I suggest you get over it!”
New Rules for Looney Tunes
Yep, it’s another post devoted to Looney Tunes. Wow, we’ve certainly been talking about Looney Tunes a lot lately, haven’t we? Well, we are long time fans of LT, and it’s in the news as of late, so let’s just roll with it.
This is in response to a thread that someone created for both the Toon Zone forum as well as the Big Cartoon Forum regarding the recent news about The Looney Tunes Show wrapping up production upon reaching 52 episodes. The original post is typed in italic:
With announcement of The Looney Tunes Show being cancelled along with Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated, and unlike Scooby Doo and even Tom and Jerry…a new Looney Tunes TV show has not been announced!
So when Warner Bros. finally does announce a new animated series based on their iconic characters(and you know they will at one point), they already did a sitcom-approach to it, what kind of direction do you think WB should go for a new LT cartoon series? What should they do and what shouldn’t they try to do?
First, I’d like to point out that neither The Looney Tunes Show nor Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc. were “canceled”, as saying so would imply that Warner Brothers had ever intended for either series to go beyond 52 episodes, which was not the case. Tony Cervone and Spike Brandt confirmed that their commitment to TLTS was only for 52 episodes, and 52 episodes was all that we got. If Cartoon Network ever wants more episodes of TLTS, WB could easily produce more, since season #2’s ratings were strong.
Having said that, I can’t really say what sort of new Looney Tunes series that I’d like to see next. I agree that Loonatics Unleashed was terrible and it was a lame attempt to revive the franchise. LU’s biggest problem was that it tried to be half-action, half-comedy when it should have been all comedy. The idea of the LT characters as superheroes itself isn’t a bad one; if Warner Brothers had made the series as a straight-up parody which made fun of the genre a la Ben Edlund’s The Tick, then that might have actually worked. Kind of like a series version of the Tiny Toons short “The Just-Us League of Super Toons”, but with Bugs, Daffy and company as the capes.
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As for new rules for any new potential Looney Tunes projects, here are a few of mine:
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1. Return to the shorts format. The Looney Tunes Show was OK and all, but let’s face it; the characters just aren’t designed to carry 22 minute stories. The shorts have never been plot heavy. Often, the “plot” would serve as little more than a setup for a series of gags. You’d have a setup, a bunch of gags and a punch line Stick to the shorts, as this is the environment that the characters perform best in. I say, have a half hour format consisting of two 11 minute shorts per show or three 7 minute shorts per show.
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2. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new ideas, settings and concepts. I enjoy the classic shorts as much as anyone else, but if the Looney Tunes characters are going to stay relevant, Warner Brothers can’t and shouldn’t just keep recycling their old material. It’s OK to occasionally reference the shorts from the past, but WB needs to forge ahead with the characters and make new comedic possibilities otherwise the franchise is doomed to fail. Therefore, don’t be afraid to experiment with some pairings that haven’t been tried before (EX: Porky and Foghorn Leghorn, Daffy and Wile E. Coyote, Granny and Taz, Marvin the Martian and Elmer Fudd, Lola and Yosemite Sam, etc.), and don’t be afraid to try out some new shticks and introduce new characters when called for, which brings me to my next point…
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3. Don’t try to cram every character into every story. The original shorts were never like that. The best ones only focused on a couple of characters, like Bugs, Elmer and Daffy or just Bugs and Daffy. There’s no need to pad the shorts to obesity.
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4. Do NOT bring in John Kricfalusi as a director! I have zero desire to see Bugs, Daffy and company “Ren & Stimpified”.
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5. Don’t rely on cheap, creatively bankrupt gimmicks or lame attention getting devices, such as turning the characters into babies or teenagers, dropping them in high school, or have them working security in a shopping mall.
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6. Keep Lola loony. I know that I’m in the minority here, but I actually like TLTS’s take on Lola. I honestly don’t get why some fans want to see Lola return to her Space Jam self. In Space Jam, Lola was a boring Mary Sue who served no other purpose than to make every male character stand in awe bugging out their eyes at the sight of her. On TLTS, Lola is funny and she’s loony. Again, I fail to see the problem here.
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7. Stick to comedy. No dramatic moments. To paraphrase something that Hamton Pig once said in the Tiny Toons episode “Toons Take Over”: You guys are funny. Comedy is what you do.”
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8. Show some other facets of Daffy Duck’s character besides his jealousy of Bugs, and above all, keep the character likable. Yes, Daffy has a dark side, but he doesn’t have to be mean all of the time. He’s not a one-dimensional meanie, and it was a mistake casting him as the perpetual antagonist in those terrible shorts made in the mid 60’s.
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9. Don’t be afraid to knock Bugs Bunny around a little. Yes, Bugs is cool, and it’s great to see him achieve victory or his nemeses, but Bugs shouldn’t win all of the time in every single situation. If Bugs never lost, he would become boring and would quickly become a writing problem. Bugs being allowed to lose sometimes keeps him human (as human as an anthropomorphic rabbit can get, anyway) and keeps the character relatable to the audience.
Generally, though, I just hope that the next LT series is funny and enjoyable. However, I do have a suggestion for the Capcom video game company. In the wake of all of Capcom’s crossover titles, I just have 5 words to say:
Looney Tunes VS Street Fighter
Make it happen, Capcom!
Can a Looney Tunes Movie Not Bomb? Part 2
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:
- 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.
- 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.
Can A Looney Tunes Movie Not Bomb? Part 1
There’s a new Looney Tunes theatrical film in the works. One that will reportedly combine CGI animation with live action. When this news was posted on the Big Cartoon Database, it was met not with “Ooohs” and “Aaahs”, but with moans and groans. Fans still have bad memories of Looney Tunes: Back In Action reeling in their heads. It’s a question that has baffled the greatest minds on the planet for years: Why can’t someone make a good Looney Tunes movie? It’s ironic that Looney Tunes, which is among the greatest animated franchises of all time, seems completely incapable of making a commercially successful feature length film, but why is that? What’s the formula for making a Looney Tunes animated feature that would score box office gold? Does such a formula even exist?
One issue as I see it is that the Looney Tunes characters were never intended to be used in features. They were created for animated shorts. Shorts and features are 2 completely different beasts each with their own set of rules. The average short typically tells a very simple story and is packed with gags. Features, by contrast, have much more complex plots and cannot be so intensely packed with gags. Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Robert McKimson and Arthur Davis never tried to get more than 10 minutes out of any of the Looney Tunes stars, and they were all great directors who produced the studios most memorable shorts. Even the features like Friz Freleng’s Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, 1001 Rabbit Tales and Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island were actually collections of the theatrical shorts with new linking material rather than being original, feature length stories. One reason why Back In Action failed was for the same reason why Tom & Jerry: The Movie failed; the characters simply don’t have deep enough personalities to sustain an audiences’ attention for over an hour. In order for a feature length story to work, the protagonists must learn something from their experience and be forever changed, but no one wants to see Bugs, Daffy and company change, because then they wouldn’t be the Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny that we know and love. We want Bugs and Daffy to remain Bugs and Daffy forever. And sure, you could conceivably bring in some live action human characters and give them the story arc instead, but the problem with that is the audience doesn’t go to a LT movie to see the live actors, so they’re not going care one whit what happens to them.
Another issue is plot. The Looney Tunes movies typically have a story line which involved the totality of LT characters appearing together as a group, and the shorts were never like that. The LT shorts typically only involve a couple of characters: Bugs and Daffy, Bugs and Elmer, Bugs, Elmer and Daffy, Daffy and Porky, Daffy & Sam, etc. It’s no easy task coming with a decent formula which can bring all of the LT characters together, save for them putting on a show or participating in some sort of competition (i.e., a sport). And then when one brings real life celebrities into the mix, it’s gets even more complicated, because then you have to have the Looney Tunes characters, and the celebrities, and a reason for why they’re brought together, and some kind of conflict for them to resolve. Finding a workable formula that combines all of these elements is no easy task.
My personal feeling is that the Looney Tunes don’t need to be in a 90 minute movie. The characters work best in shorts. That’s the medium in which the characters perform best. Instead of trying to use the LT characters for something that they were never suited for, Warner Brothers should instead focus on making new theatrical shorts featuring Bugs, Daffy and company, and more TV projects such as The Looney Tunes Show.
So, bearing all the above in mind, I think that the question that needs to be raised here isn’t “Can a feature film built around the Looney Tunes be made?”, but “Should such a thing be done at all?”
And the magic 8-Ball says “Signs point to ‘No'”.
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