Posted on 02/18/2005 7:51:00 PM PST by BenLurkin
NEW YORK - Bugs Bunny and his pals are being updated for the future — way in the future. The WB network will take the famed Looney Tunes characters as models for a new children's series, "Loonatics," that will air on Saturday mornings starting this fall. The characters' descendants — Buzz Bunny and the like — will be superhero action figures for the cartoon set in the year 2772.
The network's animators have re-imagined Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote as sleek new figures for a modern age.
"We all flipped for it," David Janollari, president of the Kids' WB, said this week. "We just said, `Wow, what a great way to take the classic Looney Tunes franchise that has been huge with audiences for decades and bring it into the new millennium.'"
Janollari said both boys and girls enjoyed the new action figures in test runs of the show. Their parents may be a little surprised, however.
"I think the legacy is intact," he said. "If anything, it's an homage to the legacy instead of a destruction of the legacy."
No way. I'm feeling way too old. That is NOT what I think of when I see in my head when I think of "Looney Toons". That's more like Freaky A$$ Toons.
Daffy Duck does NOT do the raised-fist thing. It just ain't right!
Just from this first impression it is ALL wrong.
Nope.
God, I hate the passage of time.
What is it about hideous ugliness that the younger generation finds so appealing?
My kids watch everything. But we never had the opportunity to show them real cartoons. My kids have sampled the works of Jay Ward, Tex Avery, Walt Disney Productions, Hanna-Barbera, Harvey Cartoons, Max Fleisher, and of course Warner Bros. Productions and they couldn't leave the TV.
My son asked me why I never let him see the good stuff before.
Quality never dies. Neither do royalties.
I think their smokin why to much reefer over at Warner Bros. come on... please.
Literally.
Indeed.
In college (not all that long ago...1996 maybe?), I saw an updated episode of the Tasmanian Devil in which Taz's Father called Taz's Mother his "sweet little psilocybin mushroom."
I'm thinkin' the animators over there at WB have been smokin' out long and strong for quite a while.
WTF?
Now, I'm all for updating characters and all but, not like this! Look at the evolution of Mickey for example. From Steamboat Willie to today, while his character's design was updated, Mickey didn't go punk on us.
I'm going to be sticking to anime for my animation enjoyment.
Apparently by the 28th century, the food Nazi's have won -- note the anorexic nature of the characters, and no Porky or Foghorn Leghorn...
Not even when he shouts "Duck Dodgers in the twenty-fourphth and a halphth century!"?
Many good cartoons have lapsed into the public domain because their original terms of copyright were never renewed. Unfortunately, the omnipresent cheap DVD's one sees of them tend to be hit-or-miss based upon the quality of the film prints the vendors had on hand. Some look like they were made from a decent 16mm print; others look they were made from a crummy Super 8 print that was put through a washing machine.
One frustrating aspect of this is that it's hard to judge whether a particular work was transferred from a good or bad print compared with what's out there. Some works exist in excellent form, and so a faded or scratchy copy would only be a poor excuse for the original. Other works, however, no longer exist in anything close to a pristine form. The copy that somebody found in the attic may be the only copy that still exists.
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