You know how a lot of people think Harrison Ford’s character in Blade Runner was an android himself?
Well, I think the PI in WFRR was a toon.
For the bad guy was identified as a toon simply on the strength of the fact that he survived flattening by a bulldozer, going all stretchy instead of getting crushed.
But something similar happened to the PI as well. In the elevator driven by Droopy, the PI got crushed against the ceiling and floor–toon style.
Moreover, in the Acme building, the PI did the song and dance routine to amuse the weasels to death–and survived three direct hits to the head with giant ball bearings, to comedic effect–toon style!
Even setting aside the fact that he was in Toon Town – Eddie’s whole character arc requires him to be a human. He starts out liking/helping toons until his brother is killed by one. (Which is itself proof that Eddie’s not a toon – his brother was killed via piano. No toon is killed via piano: a piano to the head would result in stars or birds, no death.)
Throughout the film Eddie shows a lack of knowledge in exactly how toons work; f’rex, he doesn’t understand that Roger could’ve slipped out of the handcuffs “only when it was funny.” I suppose he could be “passing” as a nontoon, but then the touching nature of Eddie finally accepting Roger as a friend would lose its impact.
(Was WFRR mentioned in that thread a few months ago, “films that seemed ripe for a sequel that never occurred”? Because I always hoped we’d see a sequel, though it’d be hard to top the original.)
There have been thoughts of a sequel over the years, but the disputes between Disney and Spielberg over the character have put a kibosh on them. Robert Zemeckis has stated earlier this year that there are still sequel plans.
Yeah, I would think that the various agreements / legalities required to make the first movie would be very difficult to replicate for a subsequent film. It’s hard to believe they were able to get all those characters from different studios into one flick.
It’s been a while since I last watched the movie, but I thought Eddie was unusually in tune with toons? Or is it just that while he’s knowledgeable for a human, he doesn’t know enough to plausibly be a toon?
Was Roger’s reaction to the drink in the exec’s office (and later) a feature of all toons? If Eddie reacted to alcohol the same way Roger did every time he took a drink…
He and his brother used to work in ToonTown a lot, for toons. After his brother died, Eddie commenced to pickling his brain while it was still in his skull.
This, to me, shows the brilliance of the movie. It’s self-consistent. It explains why toons act as they do, and what affects them.
I read the book Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which the film was based on. The book was all right, but the movie was better. And I usually don’t say that.
True, but the book made good use of text, combining the manic frivolity of cartoons with the hard-boiled, Chandleresque style. I still remember the description of Roger’s psychiatrist; a cartoon beaver who waxed his whiskers into a handlebar moustache and kept his tail tucked into a pocket in his jacket. In the dark, he could be mistaken for a Harley Davidson.
How does the photo of Eddie and his brother clowning it up at the police academy graduating ceremony fit into all this? I’d taken it to mean they’d specialized in toonwork as part of their training.
Furthermore, there’s a scene that was cut from the movie (and which I’ve only seen once while almost blind drunk, so I thought for a while I’d hallucinated it) where Eddie is ‘toonarooned’ - abducted by the weasels and inked with a piggie head. (It comes just before the scene where Eddie’s in his office taking a shower and - either Jessica or Baby Herman, I don’t remember which - comes in. How could Eddie be toonarooned if he’s already a toon?
It’s Jessica who comes in. He stepped into the shower to get the pig head off. In the actual film, his absence from the office is explained by having a toilet flush sound effect play at the start of the scene.
Surprisingly, Disney couldn’t get every outside character they wanted- King Features demanded too much money for Popeye, for example.