WB animators on acid do makeover on Bugs Bunny and pals

[BeyondTheGrave]

I think the problem is American cartoons trying to compete with the growing anime market. If you look at Sat. cartoons on WB or Fox their either anime or anime inspiried (such as Teen Titans). Only a few shows have nothing to do with Anime.

Trying to add "edge" to classic characters to make them more accessible to a more exposed anime audience sounds alittle fishy, when you could be spending your time makeing a more original cartoon. But hey who wants that :)


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You can’t give it, you can't buy it, and you just don't get it!-Aeon Flux

[AndyC]

Often, the smartest way to compete is to play up what makes your product different. But how many of these idiots ever do that? They'd much prefer making a crappy knockoff and trying to go head-to-head with the competition.

[ulthar]

Also, I think they are completely missing the point of what makes Looney Tunes and all the characters so lasting.  It isn't cutesy drawying, or 'edgy' characterization.

I think most modern animators consider Chuck Jones to be somewhat of a minimalist in his style.  At least that's the read I got from Chris Wedge of Blue Sky, who borrowed heavily from Jones in the background style of Ice Age.

Perhaps the endurance lies in the stories; they were cute, funny and original (or at least original takes on classics).  In other words, whether in the character design, story development or animation, they were, in a word - CREATIVE.

That's what is missing nowadays.  As AndyC points out, it's more about COPY than it is about CREATE.

Very, very sad.

[DaveMunger]

>At least they're not remaking the characters
>over again and destroying all the original stuff.

Like Lucas would do.

Was Mork involved in that time-travel cartoon somehow? I'm getting flashbacks to some cartoon where Laverne and Shirley were in the army and their sergeant was a talking pig, which I keep getting mixed up with the one where Fonz turned his motorcycle into a time machine. I don't think Mork was involved in that last one, was there more than one Happy Days time-travel cartoon?

I'd like to point out to non-American readers that if there was a cartoon character on our flag, it wouldn't be Mickey Mouse- as a people we identify much more strongly with Bugs.

AndyC: Updating = Turning them into The Shadow.

[Vermin Boy]

And here I thought Hunter S. Thompson's death would be the most depressing piece of news today...

[AndyC]

Three different cartoons: The Fonz, Laverne and Shirley in the army (with a pig voiced by Horshack), and Mork & Mindy. Hard to remember what they did with Mork. That was the last, and shortest lived, of the cartoons, not to mention the dumbest. I think they just gave him a Jetson-style spaceship/car and some kind of weird six-legged pink alien dog that could split into three pieces. Damn those stupid comic-relief animal characters.

Even at that age, I knew these were bad ideas. I couldn't understand why they couldn't just do the shows as cartoons, with some wacky, cartoon-style adventures within the original context. But no, they had to add time travel, the army and talking animals.

It's like the TV execs of the day couldn't put Godzilla into a cartoon without the annoying Godzookie. What were they smoking?

[Master Blaster]

The kids right. They do look evil. All the sharp angles and eyes without pupils dont help. It's like the bastard children of a cartoons and a tribal tattoos.

[Yaddo 42]

I can see trying to compete with anime or drawing inspiration from it (like Teen Titans or that interesting new Nick show "Avatar: The Last Airbender"), this still looks like a bad idea. I bet they want to appeal to kids who know the Loonies Tune character names but have seen so little of the original shorts themselves: no longer on networks on Saturday morning, slowly exiled off of Cartoon Network to channels like Boomerang that not everyone has, watched that product plugfest "Space Jam" over and over until the tape wore out, etc.

Those sitcom derived cartoons from ABC were why I hated so much of their Saturday morning programming when I was a kid. Plus the annoying "Richie Rich" show which must have been really popular since they kept it around for years and years, just like NBC and "The Chipmunks".

But NBC also came up with cartoon versions of dreck like "Punky Webster" and that boring and cheap looking Gary Coleman show where he was an angel in training trying to earn his wings. Can't remember if he was a kid who had died or was a wannabe angel from the get go, still seemed like a creepy concept for a cartoon. Plus since it had to have that "educational" angle and he had to learn a lesson in each episode (or the same lesson over and over) he had to screw up and act stupid for 2/3 of the show, making mistakes that any seven year old could see through.

Don't forget Mr. T's toxic cartoon show! That Mr. T show has been fodder for plenty of Gen-X childhood memory humor, I know Robert Smigel did a spoof of it on SNL for one. So a generation of now grown kids have been taking their revenge on it for a while.

[DaveMunger]

This thing sounds to me like it might make a decent cartoon-within-a-cartoon, like on Fat Albert when they'd all run to watch The Yellow Hornet (not sure of this name).

[Eirik]

First, the most horrible 70's cartoon idea was Laverne and Shirley enlisting in the US Army and -- as if that isn't preposterous enough -- having an anthropomorphic pig as a sergeant.

As for this new Loonatics nonsense, watch it flop faster than Tiny Toons.  And yes I agree that Tiny Toons was a better concept -- though I think Spielberg's incessant attempts to make kids the main characters in kids entertainment is grossly misguided.  Kids find the grown-up world much more fascinating than a bunch of squeaking freaks who act (sort of) like them.  I also found the X-treme floursecent coloring of the characters and background of Tiny Toons to be much inferior to the original true-life tones of WB cartoons.

What I don't get is WB shelling out money for this crap.  They have in the can, a lifetime supply of the best cartoons ever made.  Mel Blanc has received his last paycheck - they can air that stuff all they want FREE OF CHARGE!  It is nuts to say that kids of this generation won't like it -- it was made in the 30s and 40s and I (born in the 70s) LOVED it (note, the earlier the cartoons, the better for me - anything after 1957's What's Opera Doc falls flat for me).  My own kids (all born in the last seven years) would rather watch my Loony Tunes VHS tapes than anything being aired today.  They have a winner and it won't cost them a dime to make it...  

How come you can always count on entertainment people to focus on the bottom line EXCEPT in cases like this when doing so would give the public the best product??

[Mofo Rising]

This has been bugging me for a while.  Every single commentary any person puts out about this new "Loonatics" cartoon has been hysterical ranting about how whatever studio in charge has betrayed their childhood.  Good God, how could they do this?  Is nothing sacred?

This new cartoon is just some stupid idea about trying to shovel the WB characters into some new "these ain't your granddaddy's eggs!" sort of show.  I think it's a bad idea, you think it's a bad idea, but it's not the end all of Bugs Bunny and Co.

C'mon, show some common sense.  We've been watching the same WB cartoons for fifty years.  So they want to put out a new show that they think is "edgy" and "extreme".  So what?  It will last about as long as any other show that tried the same formula.  Hell, I remember when the "New Archies" came out.  That show was terrible and it didn't last.  And that was a franchise that completely sucked in the first place.  (If you try to argue the merits of Archie with me I will punch you in the face.)

Relax, your childhood cartoons are safe and kids will still be watching them years from now.  The systematic torture of a bull during a bullfight will always be held sacrosanct.  It's just another cartoon, and do you know how many new cartoons completely suck?

There will be no replacement of the original WB cartoons by these new "Loonatic" characters.  It's just another show.  Maybe kids will watch it, most likely they won't.  RELAX.  "Kill the Wabbit" is eternal.

[Eirik]

That'd be nice Mofo...  if it was true.  I mentioned my kids would rather watch my WB videos than anything on TV.  That's because they don't air the old Looney Tunes anymore, at least not where I live.  You need cable to very occasionally catch some of the better known ones on Cartoon network.  More obscure Looney Tunes are lost.

I wouldn't give a damn except that they only released so many of the old ones on video and I only have a fraction of those.  There are classic Bugs cartoons that I haven't been able to see in 20 years.  So instead of running those things all the time on any channel that will have them, more air time goes to some marketing sleeze's latest X-treme brainchild.

Your over-the-top exaggeration of some of our attitudes aside, I think it's a shame that kids don't have what I think are pretty classic cartoons made available to them on free TV like they were when I was a kid.  There's so much garbage being shoveled at kids that its too bad they won't air the already-made Looney Tunes very much any more.  They were genuinely funny, actually tried to make a statement about the human condition, and with their WWII era settings and their basis in old slave tales (after all, who is Bugs but a yankified and Caucasian version of Brer Rabbit?) they have the potential to actually teach kids something.  Instead, we get Loonatics, Rugrats and Bob Spongepants.  Terrific.

[L_3000]

 I think the whole ideah is so imiture. I love the Looney Toons. I watch the show all the time. The Loonatics will never last.trek_geezer wrote:

> Bugs becomes Buzz and Daffy is just Duck, Taz is Spaz, and Wile
> E.  is just Slick. Now instead of Looney Tunes, they're
> Loonatics. They are calling them descendents of the originals
> because the show will be set in the 28th century.  Looks like
> something happened in the gene pool to me.
>
> I was watching the  CBS Sunday morning show and they showed a
> little kid the classic Bugs and then Buzz.  He said the Buzz
> version looked evil.
>
> Check out  the pics and a little Quicktime over at AICN.
>
> MSNBC article
>
> Loonatics
> Preview
>

[Scott H.]

Is it just me, but shouldn't Wiley E. Coyote be the weapons expert instead of Daffy? I mean, he has been practicing.



By the way this is gonna crash and burn worse than Jar-Jar's character did.

[AndyC]

That's a good point. Daffy's only significant experience with weapons has been to get his bill blown around the back of his head repeatedly. Wile E. is the one with skills.