I am working the Morris Theater tonight, and we are showing…
I’ve been looking forward to this, but at the same time I am being reminded that my childhood was filled with horrific cartoon violence — and we laughed and laughed. Was my mind poisoned by Warner Brothers?
I also remember the great Saturday morning tragedy, as Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd and the whole gang were gradually phased out, replaced by the insipid ersatz sit-com bullshit of Hanna-Barbera. If there is a sequel to Coyote vs. Acme, I’d like it to be a war movie where Acme-fueled Warner Bros. protagonists demolish the Flintstones and the other cheaply animated dreck dribbling out of Hanna-Barbera.
I may have to go see that movie.
Remember watching a bit of animation history, and I gotta respect the cinematography of classic Looney Toons versus the flat style of Hanna-Barbera. Though I do like that the Adult Swim cartoons had a bit of fun poking at the the limited animation.
Let the South Park team handle the reboot of the Warner Brothers cartoons.
Sure, Hanna-Barbera’s animation was done on the cheap, but they had good stories. I think you’re being much too dismissive.
I saw it today with my family. It was a really excellent movie, and I don’t say that lightly about kids’ stuff!
It had all the classic Looney Tunes comedy elements, but in spite of that, it didn’t condescend to the audience at all. There was a sharp satiric sensibility under the slapstick. My wife pointed out that it’s basically the same plot as A Civil Action, just with explosions and falling anvils.
I can’t believe Warner Brothers tried to scrap this for a tax writeoff. I hope it makes enough money to make them feel really stupid about trying to bury it.
It’s funny, but if someone gets hurt, it’s hilarious.
Love me those Looney Tunes.
Looney Tunes was truly special. I still enjoy them to this day – until some streaming service like HBO Max suddenly decides to remove them and the hunt begins anew. Trying to get my nieces and nephews to warm up but they are wary as their mom has been feeding them pablum like paw patrol from day 1.
When I was a lad, I used to cackle throughout the Wile E. Coyote cartoons. My favourite by far.
The inevitable
More to the point, that sort of cartoon violence is clearly not real violence.
Next scene, the ‘victims’ are good as ever.
No permanent consequences, just the Rule of Cool.
Almost like a moral lesson, a bit warped.
I did get that the Roadrunner is the cruel one and the Coyote is the victim, though ostensibly the aggressor.
I’m surely siding with the team that includes Bugs, Taz, Marvin, and Tweety. We must account for sexist creep Pepe le Pew and kinda racist Speedy Gonzales though.
I note a bit of Hanna Barbera shade being cast in the OP. I will at least give Tom and Jerry OG status! Come on now. A battle for the ages. I also remember visiting grandma in Massachusetts as a kid and watching Banana Splits, though they were furries not animated. I feel sorry for anyone who wanted to introduce their own kids to beloved characters via The Banana Splits Movie (2019). Turned out to be intense graphic horror. Not enough therapy to undo that damage ever. Egads!
Scooby Doo was very good though!
Wiley was trying to murder the bird.
This was brought to my attention by this movie.
I’m torn.
Acme was feeding an existing predilection.
I’m not sure I like this human-cartoon intertwining. I have fond memories of going to the Town Hall for a meet and greet with Santa after watching these films and getting a paper bag full of unshelled peanuts and an orange. I was uplifted.
Wiley was trying to murder the bird.
This was brought to my attention by this movie.
I’m torn.
Acme was feeding an existing predilection.
I’m not sure I like this human-cartoon intertwining. I have fond memories of going to the Town Hall for a meet and greet with Santa after watching these films and getting a paper bag full of unshelled peanuts and an orange. I was uplifted.
fishy @12
Are coyotes bird eaters? Are road runners even that fast?
Peanuts I can get behind.
The fastest species of roadrunner have been clocked at 26 MPH. Which is pretty fast for a small bird running. But in contrast, a coyote can run up to 40 MPH, but only for short distances. One should not take cartoons literally. As a simple example: Painting a tunnel on a rock wall does not allow passage into the tunnel. Although it can fool a late model Tesla AP/FSD, since the idiot Nazi ketamine kid removed the RADAR from the later versions, and even disabled it on the functional earlier versions.
“the great Saturday morning tragedy, as Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd and the whole gang were gradually phased out, replaced by the insipid ersatz sit-com bullshit of Hanna-Barbera.”
Bugs, Elmer and the gang were a finite resource trying to fill a seemingly infinite appetite. Remember that those shorts were bought and paid for decades before they showed up in our living rooms, but you can only air them so many times in a decade before they become unattractive. Also, you really cannot compare the finances of a theatrical short in the 40s to a TV short in the 60s and 70s. I believe the Speedy Gonzales shorts were made for TV, and they don’t hold a candle to the Bugs and Roadrunner shorts.
The double post is a spasm-click. I felt it and knew it.
Speaking of cartoon violence, has anyone heard of something from China called “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf”? It’s said to be at least as violent as “Tom and Jerry”; and there was a court case in 2013 about a 10-year-old boy who had burned two younger kids in imitation of a scene he had seen on “Pleasant Goat”.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/china-court-fines-cartoon-producers-666855/
In April, a 10-year-old boy in Jiangsu province in eastern China set fire to two brothers, aged 8 and 4, after tying them to a tree and setting fire to it using dry leaves, in imitation of an episode of the show.
The Donghai County People’s Court ordered producers — Guangdong-based Creative Power Entertaining — to pay the victims compensation to cover 15 percent of their medical expenses.
The boys’ hospital bills were more than $42,800. The parents of the boy who started the fire were ordered to pay 60 percent of the medical bills, while the victims’ parents must pay the rest…
Parents have complained online that the Big, Big Wolf is beaten nearly 10,000 times and the sheep are nearly cooked more than 800 times before they escape.
The violence on the show has prompted numerous online calls for a classification system for animated TV shows to protect children from harmful content. It has been pulled from Chinese airwaves since the summer break.
Contrary to The Orange One’s declaration that he’s a “stable genius,” there’s one — and only one — Supra-Genius.
Compare:
AP news story (2018)
with:
audiovisual proof
AIR, Looney Tunes were the one set of theatrical shorts that didn’t get pushed off Saturday mornings. Plus, when they finally did lose airtime, it wasn’t to Hanna-Barbera shows. Instead, they lost time to a mix of dubbed foreign animation and the stuff taking advantage of a pair of loopholes¹. What HB pushed aside were the other collections of theatrical shorts, (stuff like Baby Huey or Heckyl&Jeckyl), and the various early comedic films that were used as cheap padding, (Little Rascals, Laurel&Hardy, 3 Stooges, etc.).
Looney Tunes stayed on the air with at least an hour on a major network Saturday morning until 1998. By that point, HB was part of Warner Brothers.
1: First, so long as the show had any educational content you could count the whole show as E/I content, (so you got 30s morality plays at the end). Second, while you couldn’t base a kids show on merchandise, you could base it on a comic that ‘just happened’ to have merch.
I just died watching the trailer. Can’t wait to see the movie.
Something that comes to mind: Don’t need to walk around in circles.
I have tickets for a showing in thirty minutes. Guess I need to head out, or I might miss some of the thirty minutes of ads and previews the theater tells me to expect.
The latino folks I know and have known weren’t insulted by Speedy Gonzales. The fluffy comedian Gabriel Iglesias has a whole routine about it that matches what I had thought FWIW.
Coyotes eat anything. Roadrunners don’t look like that at all. I have done geological field work in the desert. Coyotes will in fact eye roadrunners up for a meal. The roadrunners are hyperalert and will eye the coyotes (and you, but they let humans closer) back with caution and wit. They always stay just out of reach of the coyotes and will do this with minimum effort. It’s way too hot, and while either one might make a cautious foray toward/away from each other neither really wants to act. The comedic effect is there so that part wasn’t entirely exaggerated.
OK, that was really funny, and also surprisingly deep. Some real questions about the nature of friendship, and where the line is between perseverance and obsession. Also, a very accident-prone coyote who inexplicably loves explosives. 8/10
I enjoyed the old Hanna-Barbera shows as a kid. I grew up with The Flintstones, Top Cat, Huckleberry Hound, etc.
I still thought the early Tom & Jerry shows were much better animations and much more creative.
I also cottoned on to Top Cat really being The Phil Silvers Show with cartoon cats but it still worked for me. BTW, did you know Top Cat was retitled as Boss Cat in the UK when it was shown on the BBC? The story goes that this was because the Beeb was not allowed to carry advertising and there was a brand of cat food called Top Cat in the UK at the time.
I wasn’t so impressed with the Loony Tunes style. For some reason, it reminded me of the juvenile, exaggerated mugging of Jerry Lewis which didn’t do anything for me at all.
If you want weird comedy, there is an American dub of “Ghost Story” that turned a mediocre Japanese cartoon hilarious (but don’t show it to kids).
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=hY3A5I7m060