Yesterday I did some bitching here about how sick to death I am of computer animation, but I guess it does have some uses. For instance, it might enable producer Frank Marshall to finally get a Roger Rabbit sequel off the ground.
He tells MTV that plans to make another film derailed sometime in the mid-90s, mostly because they simply couldn’t handle the budget. He says, “If you think about it, in the original movie there’s really only 48 minutes of animation and in the new movie - or in that movie - he was in everything. So it went from 48 minutes of animation to over 100 minutes of animation.”
Now though, in a world where everything can be done quickly, easily, and usually poorly by CGI, he thinks it’d be a snap to do a sequel, and seems like he’s open to bringing Roger Back. He even talks a little about their old sequel script, saying “Roger was a song and dance man in New York City [when he] discovered that he wanted to be in the movies and so he came across the country. I remember there being a big dance number. He came out with a troupe of sort of Busby Berkeley dancers on a train and they got to Hollywood and he and Baby Herman moved in together.”
Sounds fun. Except, instead of lovingly drafted, hand-drawn animation and carefully thought out, cool practical effects, he’d love to turn Roger Rabbit 2 into, well, basically Alvin and the Chipmunks. Ugh. Ok maybe it’s tough to mesh all that 2D animation with live action, but come on, that’s what made Roger Rabbit so great in the first place. CGI Roger Rabbit interacting with CGI props? No thanks.
