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 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6989380/)
Loonatics Preview (http://www.aintitcool.com/downloads/LoonaticsPreview.mov)
Egad, that is horrible. The guys at Warner are always trying to update the classic images and it never works. Watch one of the ones from the 1930's compare it to the (I think, awful, those big eyes creep me out) Chuck Jones ones from the 1960's, and then watch this. Sad.
-Ed
Nothing is sacred anymore.
"Nothing is sacred anymore."
Yeah, exactly what he said. It's disheartening really.
Hu!-AGH!UHH!OH!!!
This looks like not one of the greatest ideas ever made.In fact it looks like one of the worst ideas ever!
I tried taking the commercial with an open mind , I liked the looks of the animation of the people but the moment I heard Bugs *ahem* Buzz's voice uttering the immortal line "What's up Doc?" I just went berserk and turn the room apart.
At least they didn't disgrace Sylfestor or Tweety, but there's always the chance of them joining the team later or having cameos. What have they done to you Daffy Duck!!!??
Hey why don't they do one where they **** up a bunch of Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and co. and make them Super Heros, No better yet make them a rival superhero team that does battle against them. This show looks like it'll suck! Waaa! Why why why!!!?
I never had interest on bugs bunny&co, even as child, but these new figures look like total crap...
This is just wrong. A pox on their house and may this abomination fail utterly and spectacularly, serving as a warning to all those who want to do unspeakable things to Bugs & co.
It looks like these characters, and their superhero premise, was cranked out in a single afternoon. It might just be time to scrap the franchise.
Ummm..okay. its not as horrible as I was expecting but its just not right. At least they're not remaking the characters over again and destroying all the original stuff.
To me this is just "Tiny toons 2: electric boobaloin da future"
Keith Olbermann and Harry Sherer were talking about this on Olbermann's show Friday. They noticed how hard companies like Time Warner work to inspire loyalty and affection for their characters and products, the better to sell us stuff with, yet when people balk at some new version of one of those sentimental favorites, their response to any criticism is "Get over it, they're just cartoons."
I guess they wanted to find a different way to reuse the characters, and they never made any "Space Jam" sequels (so far), even though they wanted to.
Maybe if there's a New Coke-style backlash they'll learn their lesson. At least "Tiny Toons" were nieces and nephews and were in the tradition of the original shorts: funny, wisecracking, surreal, filled with smart pop culture references, and could be enjoyed by adults and kids on different levels. "Animaniacs" I actually liked even better, but you could enjoy them without having to think of the old Looney Tunes masterpieces.
The Looney Tunes as Batman/the Dark Knight-style superheroes? That's a worse idea than the "Happy Days" gang as time travelling adventurers, or relaunching the Lone Ranger (twice) after the Western had died especially after it had died as entertainment for kids.
Yaddo 42 wrote:
> That's a worse idea than the "Happy Days" gang as time
> travelling adventurers
Ha! I was just thinking that this reminded me of the late 70s, when practically anything could be perverted into the most ill-conceived kids' programming imaginable. If the Harlem Globetrotters can be superheroes, why not Bugs Bunny? I'm kidding, of course.
Funny how updating characters often involves making them edgy, evil-looking and full of "attitude," and sticking them in over-the-top action-packed adventures. I don't want to think about what that says about today's kids.
I doubt this show will last long, anyway. The edgy, futuristic superhero thing didn't work particularly well for any of the actual superheroes it's been tried on (at least on TV). I can't see it working on Looney Toons. Besides, the drawing is crappy. With the exception of Taz, the characters pretty much all look alike.
What these people fail to recognize is that these characters have entertained us for decades because there is something enduring about them. They need very little updating, and in making sweeping changes like this, these people are creating characters that are doomed to become dated in a few years, even if they are initially successful. Original Bugs will still be entertaining 20 years from now, when people are looking back on Buzz Bunny the way we look at the kinder, gentler Tom & Jerry of the 70s.
Keep in mind that Tiny Toons, which was actually a good show (probably one of the few clever cartoons to come out of the fad of making juvenile versions of characters), only lasted a couple of years, and is already a distant memory. This piece of crap hasn't got a snowball's chance in Hell.
Yaddo 42 wrote:
> That's a worse idea than the "Happy Days" gang as time
> travelling adventurers, or relaunching the Lone Ranger (twice)
> after the Western had died especially after it had died as
> entertainment for kids.
Time travelling Happy Days? Hmm. Get me the script department! This will be bigger than "Marry my Dad".
raj wrote:
> Time travelling Happy Days? Hmm. Get me the script
> department! This will be bigger than "Marry my Dad".
It was done, it pains me to say.
It was? damn, I missed it.
Saturday morning cartoon. I believe it was called Fonzie and the Happy Days Gang or some such thing. In addition to the regular cast of voices, it had a bumbling dog in a leather jacket (because it was the rule for cartoons at the time), and Didi Conn as the flaky futuristic chick (named Cupcake if memory serves) who grabbed Richie, Fonzie, Ralph and Potsie from 1957 and was bouncing from one time period to another, trying to get them home. Strange but true.
Of course, if it were made today, it would be called Happy Days Extreme, and Fonzie and the boys would be fighting street gangs, mobsters and gruesome aliens.
Post Edited (02-21-05 12:15)
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
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.
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.
>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.
And here I thought Hunter S. Thompson's death would be the most depressing piece of news today...
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?
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.
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.
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).
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??
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.
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.
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 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6989380/)
>
> Loonatics
> Preview (http://www.aintitcool.com/downloads/LoonaticsPreview.mov)
>
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.
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.