How the New ‘Looney Tunes’ Can Be Great
I’m not pessimistic about this.
UPDATE 3/13/19: Warner Bros. Animation announced this week that the new Looney Tunes shorts will debut at Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2019. The festival runs June 10–15. Our original story published June 13, 2018 follows after the jump.
Earlier this week, Warner Bros. made a bold announcement regarding the intellectual property it’s controlled for decades that has nothing to do with the letters D and C. The company plans on releasing 1,000 minutes’ worth of new Looney Tunes shorts, aptly named Looney Tunes Cartoons, across a variety of streaming or broadcast platforms. All of the cartoons will be short-form projects clocking in at one to six minutes in length, and WB says they will be creator-driven, which makes it sound like there will be plenty of flexibility for wacky, weird, and esoteric choices made by the cartoonists who will pull them off.
This is the first announcement of the new shorts, but it feels a lot more in line with the heyday of the 6–10-minute Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, and Chuck Jones shorts. The classic were notable for the many, many artists and creators who got to work on them in the decades between 1930 and 1969, their distribution ahead of movie screenings, and their continued lifespan in syndication on the likes of Cartoon Network and Boomerang. With the obvious caveat that we have no idea what to expect beyond the promo image above, here’s how I think the WB can make this new project great and avoid making it Looney Tunes: Back in Action…
1. Wild experimentation
If there’s one ongoing complaint I’ve always had with the Looney Tunes projects released in the last few decades, from Space Jam to 2015's New Looney Tunes, it’s that none of them ever felt bold or original enough while still remaining true to the characters. In retrospect, the Michael Jordan vehicle was a shameless cash grab. And Looney Tunes: Back in Action was worse: an unfunny slog that simultaneously made you feel crummy for Brendan Fraser. Loonatics Unleashed put these characters in…a post-apocalypse? The Looney Tunes Show cast them as roommates, Regular Show–style, and had too few visual gags to feel like Looney Tunes. And New Looney Tunes suffered from an unfocused production between seasons. So from a format perspective, the return to pure short-form cartoons that begin and end in less than six minutes, presumably without much continuity or long-term investment, offers a unique opportunity for experimentation. You can do a post-apocalyptic short and not have to carry the conceit for several seasons. You can do one where Bugs and Daffy are roommates and ignore that idea entirely in the next entry. You can break the fourth wall with zero consequence as Chuck Jones did in the Daffy Duck classic “Duck Amuck.” WB seems to get that 1,000 minutes is a huge sandbox to play in, and splitting it up into shorts allows its new creators hundreds of toys.
2. New blood
As fun as it might be to see seasoned animation industry pros like Pendleton Ward or Rebecca Sugar or Alex Hirsch tackling these classic characters, frankly I’m not as interested in that as much as I am in whatever some kid in their early 20s is working on. From a practical and creative perspective, WB is going to want those veteran cartoonists to contribute ideas and bring their clout, but this series as announced stands a solid chance to become hyper-influential if it can break the next generation of talent. Here’s hoping WB is smart enough to draw from that pool.
3. Diverse representation
Along those same lines, those creators should come from diverse walks of life and bring new perspectives and fresh takes to these classic characters. What would an explicitly Pride-influenced Bugs Bunny short look like? What would Jordan Peele — who seemingly sounds eager to try his Oscar-winning hand at cartoon properties, given this crazy Gargoyles report this week — bring to the table if he could direct a six-minute short? What could the mega-viral “In a Heartbeat” creators pull off in a Pepé Le Pew short? And how could the Looney Tunes style of comedy eviscerate the current political or social climate in the US? The WB can only win by making inclusivity a priority. Doing so can also help continue to undo the damage of the unfortunate stereotypes of the past that made it into decades of the original shorts.
One last thing…
This is what you get when you Google “looney tunes new shorts” right now:
May it never change.
Thanks for reading The Dot and Line, where we talk about animation of all kinds. Don’t forget to👏 for this article and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
