Looney Tunes Features

I've loved animation for as long as I remember, and the cast of Looney Tunes have always been my favourite animated characters. Heck, they've always been some of my favourite fictional characters, period. As much as I love Disney and Ghibli, there's no seven-minute stretch of time in all of animation history that means as much to me as The Great Piggy Bank Robbery or Rabbit Fire.

However, as much as I love the Looney Tunes' short films, their theatrical features¹ are a mixed bag. Both Space Jam movies have their moments, but neither are very good overall. Back in Action is the best dedicated Looney Tunes theatrical feature I've seen yet, but it's still not as good as the original shorts.

I grew up in an era when these cartoons were easily available and the characters were on every piece of merchandise imaginable, from video games to T-shirts. Looney Tunes wasn't just a series of short films or a TV series: it was a property. These were beloved characters, and that meant that their fans were willing to spend money on them. I think that this is the root of my problem with their features. 

For a long time, Warner Brothers has essentially treated the Looney Tunes as Muppets. I don't mean this as a dig at the Muppets, mind you: Jim Henson and his colleagues have made some genuinely great material, including in the world of theatrical features. But the Looney Tunes are not the Muppets. The Muppets are chaotic performers who work together and know each other. They interact with one another, travel along in groups, and often act as one. They can work together and it feels organic because that's how they were designed. At some point, this became a popular way to depict the Tunes. The merchandise showed them as friends, Tiny Toon Adventures depicted them as teachers at a school for cartoons, and Space Jam depicted them as, again, Muppets: chaotic performers who work together and know each other. These are characters who, more often than not, are trying to kill one another. Imagine if Warner Brothers kept trying to tell us that Batman is friends with the Joker and Two-Face and you'll have a good understanding of why I'm not a fan of this approach to the Looney Tunes.

Another problem with Space Jam--and one that clearly stems from its insistence on forcing so many characters into the cast--is that it makes the Tune Squad feel like a single entity. Each individual member tells different jokes but they're otherwise interchangeable, showing the same emotions and undergoing the same character development at the same time. Bugs Bunny himself is the only one who seems to have his own role in the story and, even then, only as a leader to the other Looney Tunes, never as an adversary.

Back in Action is the better movie because, unlike the Space Jams it was sandwiched between, it actually presented the cast as individuals rather than a collective. Bugs' enemies--Yosemite Sam, Wile E Coyote, the Tasmanian Devil, and Marvin the Martian--have goals that are in conflict with Bugs' goals. Daffy is on Bugs' side, but his motive and character arc are different. 

But even Back in Action is still a Looney Tunes crossover movie rather than a Bugs and Daffy movie. The other classic cartoon characters are in roles that better fit their personalities, but did we really need all of them? This may sound like a heretical question, like asking why a Muppet movie doesn't give more time to the humans, but hear me out: if Chuck Jones or Friz Freleng had decided to do a Bugs Bunny feature in the 40s or 50s, would they have insisted on including Sylvester the Cat or Foghorn Leghorn?

I think they would've followed the lead of other great comedians, many of whom (such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy) created features that rivalled or even surpassed their shorts. And I think it's helpful to remember that Looney Tunes was originally a series of short films rather than a TV show. When Laurel and Hardy started making features, they were Laurel and Hardy features--they didn't give equal billing to the Little Rascals and Charley Chase to create a Hal Roach Movie.

The Looney Tunes shorts have generally focused on a small cast. There were some atypical pairings--Marvin the Martian and the Tasmanian Devil are primarily Bugs Bunny's enemies, for example, but both have also co-starred with Daffy Duck. But each series still felt like its own little world, and when a major character did appear in a minor role--Pepé Le Pew's appearance at the end of the Sylvester and Tweety short Dog Pounded, for example--he was treated as a cameo rather than a cast member.

This is why I was intrigued by Coyote vs. Acme--and disappointed by its cancellation. The premise (that Wile E. Coyote is suing the Acme corporation for selling him faulty products) is a concept very suited to the Coyote. I don't know if it is a good movie, and it allegedly still features cameos from the other Looney Tunes characters, but the fact that it's focusing on a specific character makes me optimistic.

One of the requirements for my ideal Looney Tunes feature is that it would work as someone's introduction to the character. City Lights works if you don't know who Charlie Chaplin is. The Castle of Cagliostro works if you don't know who Lupin III is. The Dark Knight Trilogy works if you don't know who Batman is. They're good introductions to these characters. None of the other Looney Tunes features I've named up until now--none of the ones I've seen, and probably not Coyote vs. Acme, from what I've read--would work if you don't know who these characters are. Seeing predators casually teaming up with their prey only makes sense if you recognize them as part of the same brand. If Space Jam was all we had of the Looney Tunes, the story would feel incomplete. These movies are about the franchise as much as they're about the characters.

That's not to say that this sort of self-referential story is wrong, mind you--even the original shorts had entries that didn't work in a vacuum. But does that need to be the only way these characters are treated? Why not do a Looney Tunes feature that stands on its own?

I have a feeling that The Day the Earth Blew Up² might hit the mark in ways that Space Jam, Back in Action, and maybe even Coyote vs. Acme couldn't. Based off everything I've read so far, it's not just a Looney Tunes movie, but a Daffy and Porky movie. The story's about an alien invasion, but the alien doesn't seem to be Marvin the Martian. Petunia Pig--a major part of Porky's history, but minor player in Looney Tunes as a whole--features prominently. Will this movie work as an introduction to these characters for someone who has never seen them before? Well, it's impossible to say for sure right now, but their status as cultural icons isn't baked into the premise quite as thickly as usual, so I'm inclined to say that it will.

Of course, I'm not going to know how good this newest movie is until I've seen it, and I may never know if Coyote vs. Acme was better or worse than I expect. But this is the sort of direction that I've long-thought the characters should go in. These are some of the most beloved characters of all time for a reason, and I'd like to see them make a feature that can approach the greatness of their short subjects. And I think that will mean focusing more on less.

 

¹ There are a few non-theatrical Looney Tunes features that I haven't seen, including Rabbits Run, King Tweety, and Taz: Quest for Burger. Wikipedia's articles on these movies gives me the impression that the last two avoid the problems I discuss in this article. 

² The Day the Earth Blew Up was originally intended for a straight-to-streaming release, which is consistent with my previous footnote.