George Lucas Isn't the Only One Raping Your Childhood... ...but at least he had the decency to stop at your childhood and not go after that of your parents and grandparents too. For the most heinous idea in the history of money grubbing, soul sucking ideas in entertainment read on...



From MSNBC:
NEW YORK - Bugs Bunny and his pals are being updated for the future — way in the future.

The WB network will take the famed Looney Tunes characters as models for a new children’s series, "Loonatics," that will air on Saturday mornings starting this fall. The characters’ descendants — Buzz Bunny and the like — will be superhero action figures for the cartoon set in the year 2772. The network’s animators have re-imagined Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote as sleek new figures for a modern age.

"We all flipped for it," David Janollari, president of the Kids’ WB, said this week. "We just said, ‘Wow, what a great way to take the classic Looney Tunes franchise that has been huge with audiences for decades and bring it into the new millennium."’ Janollari said both boys and girls enjoyed the new action figures in test runs of the show. Their parents may be a little surprised, however. "I think the legacy is intact," he said. "If anything, it’s an homage to the legacy instead of a destruction of the legacy."

Howls of protest, however, are surrounding Warner Bros.' plans to bulk up Bugs, Daffy, Taz and other legendary Looney Tunes characters as a team of futuristic fighting superheroes for fall.

But Sander Schwartz, president of the studio's animation division, isn't sufferin' any succotash. "Anytime there is an effort to tamper or tinker with the icons of American culture, you'll find you get strong reactions one way or the other."

Unlike other, less drastic reinventions of the beloved characters, who rocketed to stardom in the 1940s, Loonatics Unleashed has inspired a New Coke-style backlash. That's because its comic foils are being "reimagined" for Kids' WB as dark superheroes with swordlike ears and fists of fury (plus eyes with no pupils), set in 2772.

Soon after word surfaced last month, purists pummeled the idea. Jimmy Kimmel called Loonatics "one of the worst things I've ever seen," hurling an insult that would make Granny blush: "Tweety Bird looks like a hooker from space." CNN's Anderson Cooper described a drawing of the new Bugs as "a wabbit you wouldn't want to cross, or even meet in a dark alley," and said he's "prepared to beg our corporate sibling Warner Bros. not to do this terrible thing." Regis Philbin swore off Bugs entirely — "I'm not going to watch him anymore" — while Diane Sawyer offered a more succinct "Huh?"

But Schwartz notes that Bugs and his pals aren't vanishing, only sharing DNA with these new "descendants" being "added to the family." (And to the studio's merchandising machine, which often drives kids' programming.) Still, rival programmers are baffled. Cartoon Network's Michael Ouweleen says, "It seemed odd to use the wiseacre personality of Bugs" in an action series. Disney Channel president Rich Ross, who's reviving Mickey Mouse for a preschool series next year, says the issue is "being true to the characters. They cannot be genetically re-engineered in my book; you lose the essence. "Kids' WB chief Betsy McGowen, who is battling a Saturday-morning ratings slide, welcomes the naysayers: "It's great we're getting all this attention."

But as Harry Shearer (The Simpsons' Principal Skinner) told MSNBC: "These characters don't look like they belong on a cartoon. They look like they belong on stage with Kiss."

Does anyone even do cell animation anymore. All the 2D stuff looks alot like Flash to me.

And my childhood remains quietly unraped by Mr. Lucas.

My thoughts on the subject perfectly wrapped up in this hilarious parody.

Click the Watch This Movie in the upper right if you missed it.