February 18, 2005
"Excuse me, but 'proactive' and 'paradigm'? Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?"
Posted by pete at February 18, 2005 12:14 AMI should probably be more indignant about this news than I actually am:
Hoping to breathe new life into its animated Looney Tunes franchise and prop up the WB television network's slumping Kids' WB line-up, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. is planning to launch a new cartoon series this fall based on "re-imagined" versions of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tasmanian Devil, Lola Bunny, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.
Warner Bros. has created angular, slightly menacing-looking versions of the classic Looney Tunes characters for its new series, dubbed "Loonatics" and set in the year 2772. Names for the new characters haven't been finalized, but they are likely to be derived from the originals: Buzz Bunny, for example. Each new character retains personality quirks of the original. The new Bugs, for example, will be the natural leader of the Loonatics' spaceship; the new Daffy will remain confident that he is the one who should be in charge.
Warner Bros. isn't sending the venerable original Looney Tunes cast into retirement. But it is trying to update the characters' appeal among modern kids. The classic characters were wisecrackers who rode their irreverent humor to stardom in the 1940s. The challenge now for Warner Bros. is to find a fresh way to tap the funny bone of an audience raised on Bart Simpson and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Yeah, because neither The Simpsons nor SpongeBob have ever directly stolen bits from Looney Tunes (Homer "going crazy" in the "Shinning" segment from Treehouse of Horror VI, for example). Come on, people...the original Looney Tunes have been ripped off for material by every cartoon since Yogi Bear.
Because I believe in sharing the pain, here's a pic of the "reimagined" characters:
Who the hell is "Lola Bunny?"
I get it, of course; today's youth are much more into that "extreme" thing than old farts like yours truly, who - in spite of growing up in the era of Star Wars and KISS - were still content to watch repeats of 35 year-old cartoons every Saturday morning for ten years. What were we thinking?
Funny is funny, dammit. Daffy Duck as Danny Kaye scatting to Red Riding Hood in "Book Revue" was funny. Bugs and Daffy toying with Elmer Fudd in "Rabbit Fire" was funny. Foghorn Leghorn saying "He's about as sharp as a sack full of wet mice" is funny. Like it or not, these cartoons are classics, and accessible to most all ages.
But why listen to me when you have the geniuses at WB making such cogent arguments?
"The new series will have the same classic wit and wisdom, but we have to do it more in line with what kids are talking about today," says Sander Schwartz, president of Warner Bros. Animation. The plots are action-oriented, filled with chases and fights. Each character possesses a special crime-fighting power.
Jesus, they've made an animated version of Misfits of Science.
Sounds familiar? The format echoes a successful show Warner Bros. launched in 2003 on its WB network and Cartoon Network called "Teen Titans," about five teenage superheroes. The series, featuring dark, futuristic characters, based on such DC Comics personalities as Robin the Boy Wonder, quickly became a hit. It ranked No. 26 among kids programs for the fourth quarter last year.
Uh, yeah...except Teen Titans dates back to the 1960s. Using this logic, why doesn't Warner Brothers make a new TV series out of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen?
A more fitting comparison might be to the series mentioned here:
Given Warner's mixed track record over the past two decades with the Looney Tunes franchise, advertisers may be wary. Steven Spielberg sparked things up in the early 1990s with "Tiny Toons," a series in which new characters interacted with the originals. But a 2002 effort, "Baby Looney Tunes," has been a dud for the Cartoon Network, where it ended the fourth quarter ranked No. 104 among kids programs.
Tiny Toons was intermittently amusing, if decidedly inferior to other WB fare like Freakazoid and Animaniacs. It only ran for two years, which leads me to think that revised versions of the Looney Tunes characters might be a bit played out.
It's a risky time to launch an expensive Saturday-morning cartoon. Kraft Foods Inc., which spent about $90 million on children's advertising in 2004, said in January it would stop advertising junk food to kids under 12. The company's decision, coming as the food industry generally is shifting kids advertising dollars to the Internet and videogames, is expected to result in softer ad sales. The kids "upfront" market, when $700 million to $800 million in national kids-TV advertising is sold to deep-pocketed marketers, kicks off today.
Kraft's brave decision to stop shilling its individually wrapped slices of thrombosis to The Children notwithstanding, Saturday mornings are a wasteland for kids' programming. Long gone are the days when the intrepid pre-adolescent could spend five hours watching The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, followed by Land of the Lost, the Banana Splits, or Thundarr the Barbarian (and all punctuated liberally by those annoying "In the News" segments). These days, you get cartoons on only two stations (UPN and WB), and weekend versions of Today and The Early Show elsewhere.
I used to think those stupid Bugs Bunny cartoons would run forever. How wrong I was.
It's not as if the Kids' WB has much of a choice about whether to be so aggressive. At a time when the behemoths of kids TV -- cable TV's Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel -- are gaining or stable, ratings on broadcast TV's Kids' WB have plunged.
That's quite the dilemma: boost your children's programming to cover more hours or continue to float your network on quality fare like Judge Mathis and Elimidate.
I'm glad Chuck Jones isn't alive to see this.
This is really sad. Leave the classics alone! Come up with a new idea if the new generation wants something edgier! Those cartoons unify several generations of kids. Even though I grew up abroad, I watched the same cartoon as every kid in America did on Saturday mornings for the last 30 years, which is just a great shared experience. I was even mad when Michael Jordan's Space Jam came out.
Words fail me.
Just...just look at those monstrosities.
I am weeping inside.
I guess teams of supers have to have at least one girl, and so the Toon Titans get Leeann Bunny or whatever. I'm having trouble coming up with strong female Looney Tunes Wait a minute! Granny! from Sylvester & Tweety! They should toss Leeann and use Granny. Old is the new edgy.
This leads naturally to the meme: if the Toon Titans fight to the death, who wins?
(insert old Letterman joke here: the television viewing public.)
Lola Bunny came from Space Jam, and she was created by corporate types to give Bugs a love interest. The WB has gotten twitchy over the years because of Bugs acting, you know, "fancy," and being embraced by the godless Homasexshuls.
I don't know what the suits' problem is--I mean, what red-blooded American male hasn't wanted to dress up like Carmen Miranda?
Okay, who the fuck let Jamie Kellner anywhere NEAR animation again?!? Because at this moment, that's about the only explaination for this travesty.
(For those who haven't heard of this charming pile of shit, Kellner is pretty much an example of the Peter Principle at work. He almost killed Cartoon Network with is soulless programming. However, he sided with AOL in the AOL-TW merger, so you can guess what happened.)
Yes, Teen Titans is somewhat reimagined from the original comic, but at least it's faithful to it. Storylines from the old comic have been made into storylines in the series.
Finally, the comment re: Kids' WB and CN reminds me of a point Ted Turner made in the Washington Monthly - they're part of the same damn organization! In fact, there's a lot of show "theft" between the two. (Anyone else remember the travesty that was the Toonami "rebranding" of Kids' WB on the weekdays?) Though this might give another reason for this - the WB execs are jealous of the success of their little siblings at CN. Too bad they don't get why the CN execs are so good - they don't just see dollar signs, but actually live and breathe animation.
I too grew up with WB cartoons from the 30s-40s-50s. The animation quality was far superior to anything made after the mid-50s, and they were funny as hell!! (Still, I must admit to enjoying the CBS Saturday morning line-up, which included Wacky Races, Scooby Doo, and I enjoyed other Hanna-Barbera stuff, like the Flintstones.)
I have two kids, who I've turned on to the old Warner Brothers cartoons, pointing out that they were drawn BY HAND, that the characters' entire bodies MOVE, and they agree that these are better and funnier than any of today's pseudo-animated cartoons.
To me, this is yet another example of out-of-touch uncreative soul-less corporate conglomerate morons dumbing down kids with unappealing dark, sinister characters in cartoons with no story, plot-line or any redeeming quality -- no entertainment, no wit, no joy, no fun, just menace and violence under the guise of "action" -- all of which is, in my opinion, part of a larger corporate/government agenda to indoctrinate youth by numbing them to violent behavior and encouraging mindless consumption. Don't think too much kids -- just keep buying our crap!! And get ready to sign up for the draft -- fighting bad guys is COOL!!
The best response, in addition to wising your kids up FIRST by turning them ON to the classic cartoons and OFF to consumer culture, is to BOYCOTT THIS CRAP and other similar crap!!
Depending how much you really hate this kind of shit, you can engage in an organized effort to express your displeasure to the ADVERTISERS, implying that a boycott could extend to ALL of their products, even those not advertised on that show!! Remember, BOYCOTTING is a very powerful weapon when used effectively!!
Don't just sit there complaining -- DO SOMETHING about it!!
I, for one, would totally love an animated Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen as long as they borrowed from the Kirby run.
The Krypto cartoon looks to be much cooler--plus it has Streaky and Ace the Bat-Hound.
But these kids today, with their rock and roll and their hula hoops? They want the Warner Brothers equivalent of Scrappy-Doo.
Cunts. Cunts all.
I've seen a lot of reaction to this story about a new and "improved" version of Bugs Bunny. Pete and......
| --Posted to Off the Kuff on Feb 21, 2005 4:51 PM:. |
I hate this new series. I can't believe they would make something so disgusting. Here is what my friends thought: they stink and buzz bunny is wrong. ;
i dont like the new loonatics either. i mean why take such a good childish cartoon and turn it into an evil sick cartoon. if you read about it u will no that it is an evil way to portray the looney tunes, even if they are long related decsendant. plus the new powers they have are wrong and are disgusting if you think about it. any kid that would like this stuff is probably going to grow up to be a freak or terrorist or something.;
Why would you take a classic show and turn it into a nightmare. Children could get nightmares from this show. It is unappropriate and is wrong. Using private parts to be a superhero is absurd. I don't know of one person who is happy about this new show. If you want to make a bad show, make another show. I won't let my children grow up watching this porn and neither will other parents. I refuse to accept this change.
I must have been a child genius because I understood the repartee (wiseassery) of those WB characters and the satiric humor. I remember watching those cartoons with my dad, both of us laughing hysterically at the SAME jokes. Of course, children today are too stupid to understand satire and wiseassery, right? Violence and meanness are the only things today's monsters understand so let's turn these witty, delightfully individual, chock-full-o'sass and humor characters into flat, generic, aggressive, meanspirited, violent, humorless creatures and cram them down the kids' throats! Hey, the adults at the WB know what today's kids want, they certainly don't have to ASK the kids, do they? And God knows, kids today are so completely different from kids in my day they won't laugh at anything I found funny way back when! Heavens to Murgatroyd, who's running the show over there?