Sunday, July 8, 2007

Bugs & Daffy in Gremlins 2

Here's one of the more unusual appearances of Bugs & Daffy. Director (and Looney Tunes fan) Joe Dante had Chuck Jones create an animated opening for his 1990 sequel Gremlins 2 - The New Batch to help set the more comedic tone of the movie. Daffy, tired of Bugs hogging the spotlight, tries to open the film by riding on the Warner Bros. shield... without much success. Daffy would reappear during the ending credits to heckle the audience ("Don't you people have homes?") and finally attempt to take over Porky's "That's all, folks!" before being smashed by another WB shield informing us Chuck Jones had provided the new animation. All the characters were voiced by Jeff Bergman. Here is the opening to the movie as it appeared in theaters:




These Looney Tunes segments are sometimes edited out when the film is rerun these days on cable TV (I know they were edited when this movie ran on cable's Sci-Fi channel).

Just moments ago, I found this on Wikipedia:

"The DVD includes a longer version of the cartoon short. In it, Daffy mistakenly writes the title Gremlins 2 as Gremlin Stew and then attempts to rename the film The Return of Super-Daffy Meets Gremlins 2 Part 6: The Movie. This material was removed from the film because early audiences expected a live-action film and were bewildered by the lengthy animated sequence."

I never knew this! I guess I will have to rent the DVD now.

4 comments:

Coyote said...

I always hated that they chopped off the opening of this film when it was shown on tv. I also did not know about the extended opening.

Anonymous said...

One of my channels air now a new Looney Tunes TV show named Bugs et ses amis (The same with Quoi de neuf, Bugs) and the drawing where Bugs was up to the WB logo was reused from the show. I know it look familiar because i think to the ed of Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie bu i never noticed the familiar pose between this movie and the show himself. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Hey guys, I have the Gremlins 2 DVD, and let me just say, that I dislike the alternate opening where Daffy messes with the titles. It was poorly animated, and Bugs and Daffy were poorly drawn. I'm glad they didn't use that one. The actual version where Daffy tries to ride the sheild is hilarious, and well animated. Chuck Jones did a great job directing this. And I think one of the co-owners of Inkwell Images animated parts of it.

-Brandon Pierce

Anonymous said...

Actually, the animation that made it into the final film doesn't look all that hot either. The only parts that really have any energy are Daffy shouting "Stop the music!" and yanking Bugs off the shield and Bugs spinning Daffy into the main title. It almost looks like the work of Nancy Beiman, who animated for Greg Ford and Terry Lennon around that time. Any word on whether or not she pitched in on this project too?

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