'Looney Tunes Cartoons': No more guns for Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam, upset fans say 'it doesn't make sense'
'Looney Tunes Cartoons' are back, but with a twist. Those who grew up watching the show will remember Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam with guns. Well, that's not going to be the case anymore. The HBO Max throwback to the 1930s and '40s beloved cartoons "will not be doing guns", according to executive producer and showrunner Peter Browngardt. The cartoon violence in the new show will have its usual dose of anvils, dynamite and other weapons as part of the all-new animation that takes a cartoonist-driven approach to its simple storytelling. So, Elmer hunts 'wabbits' with a scythe instead of a gun and Yosemite Sam does not have a pair of guns.
"We're not doing guns," Browngardt told The New York Times. "But we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in." Another change is that 'Looney Tunes Cartoons' doesn't do scripts. Before the coronavirus pandemic, cartoonists would gather in a room to draw pictures and gags and would focus on simple concepts. "Some of them have maybe gone a little too far, so they might come out in a different format," Browngardt said, mentioning that some of the more extreme shorts could be released "packaged for an Adult Swim type of thing".
Johnny Ryan, who is the story editor, added that there were further changes in the approach to storytelling. "We're going through this wave of anti-bullying, everybody needs to be friends, everybody needs to get along," he said. "Looney Tunes is pretty much the antithesis of that. It's two characters in conflict, sometimes getting pretty violent."
Fans are not pleased with this. "I know this s**t is ridiculous it’s F***ING LOONEY TUNES! Also so stupid how they can still use knives, bombs, blades, and other shut but not guns???" a fan tweeted. "NEW Looney Tunes cartoons Ban Elmer Fudd from having a Gun buuuuuuut can use other implements of Death... So a Hunter can't use a Gun, but can Bugs Bunny still dress up as a Woman? Or is that concerned wrong in today's society too?" tweeted a fan. "Even weirder for the new Looney Tunes to choose to not let Elmer or Yosemite Sam use guns if that comment about being presented as 'Adult Swim' content, or whatever that was supposed to mean. If the target audience is older, it doesn't make sense," a fan wrote.
Another had a different viewpoint altogether. "idk, I feel like especially considering those affected gun violence over the last few years, the newer (and yes, 'softer') audience of young children doesn’t /need/ to be seeing guns if they’re not imperative to the content. It’s looney tunes, not L-35 tunes, y’know?" Another angrily posted, "Not having guns doesn’t make sense. Why remove guns in the new Looney Tunes show when they already existed on the past ones." One fan wrote, "Looney Tunes have banned guns before America have."
It's clear that the creators wish to be more sensitive to the times as gun violence has emerged as a burning problem over the years. Considering there's been much awareness spread around gun-violence and the horrors of bullying, the creators wish to make the cartoons more child-friendly, rather than endorse violence, as there's enough of that already. This is actually quite beneficial, as many cartoons of the older days, as crazy and zany as they were, had profound violence in them, be it the 'Looney Tunes' or the 'Tom And Jerry' cartoons.