Does the Name "Poochie" Mean Anything to You?
The creators of Loonatics, a forthcoming show for the WB, plan to "update" Bugs Bunny and four other Warner Bros. characters (along with Lola Bunny of Space Jam, who I guess I should call a Time Warner character) by projecting them 700 years into the future and giving them superpowers. The new toons are supposed to be descendants of Bugs and co.—the leader of the pack will be called Buzz Bunny, because buzz is what it's all about, baby—and they will look like this. Warner suit Sander Schwartz says the show will bring the franchise into "an age of technology, an age of hip, cool animation."
This news has provoked much outrage in the blogosphere. In the words of Jonah Goldberg:
If there's one issue which should mend the left-right divide on the web, this is it. Bang the war drums.
They…are…ruining Bugs Bunny!
To which I reply: Bugs Bunny went on life support in the '60s, when Warner Bros. directors like Robert McKimson and Alex Lovy proved shaky heirs to the characters developed by Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, and Bob Clampett. He died in the '70s, when he appeared in atrocious TV specials with "modern" soundtracks. His soul was suffering in Purgatory in the '90s, when some ersatz rabbit appeared under his name in Space Jam and those MCI commercials.
In other words, it's too late to ruin Bugs Bunny. The puckish pookah is as ruined as he's going to get. In 1991, Greg Ford and Terry Lennon made a brilliant short called Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers, in which—I quote Jonathan Rosenbaum's review—"malignant carrots from outer space are turning all the Warner Brothers cartoon characters into poorly and cheaply drawn replicas of their former selves." That about sums it up. (A similar theme animated Joe Dante's underrated Looney Tunes: Back in Action.) Fortunately, the original Bugs Bunny shorts of the '40s and '50s are still as funny as ever, despite the mostly mediocre stuff that followed them.
So while I'm sure this Loonatics show will be deeply moronic, at least it
1. isn't pretending that these are the same characters we all love, and
2. might be so bad that it'll give us something to gape at. Just as my generation spent years wondering if we hallucinated The Star Wars Holiday Special and that Superman vs. Muhammad Ali comic book, our children will have conversations 30 years from now about that weird show they think they remember, where Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote lived in the future and looked like anorexic X-Men. "Did that really happen? Wait, you remember it too? Thank God, I was afraid I was going crazy…"
[Acknowledgements: I stole the "Time Warner character" line from Clark Stooksbury, who used it when he refused to watch Space Jam with me nine years ago. Also, I already know that "puckish pookah" is redundant, so there's no need to e-mail me about it.]