A Wabbit, A Duck, and A Fudd!: The Wabbit Season Twilogy!

The great trilogies are hard to come by these days. There's a certain law that pertains to successful movie franchises that they must have up to at least three films in there series to satisfy hardcore fans. The first film is usually the only good one ("The Matrix") sometimes the second film can be just as good or in some cases can be debated to be the better movie ("The Empire Strikes Back", "The Godfather Part 2"). When the third film comes around, the creators are usually running on fumes, and in most cases you are sure to be disappointed.

Perhaps three films is asking too much, but there are a few exceptions. In its own small but no less important way, Chuck Jones along with writer Michael Maltese came up with the greatest trilogy of films of them all. Occasionally called "The Hunter Trilogy" or "The Rabbit Season Trilogy" or my favorite "Wabbit Season Twilogy" (or perhaps "Twiwogy", this series of films comprised of three of the Warner Brothers super stars: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd, created, or re-created the characters as we know them today, and perhaps best showed off the subtlety of Jones' work the best.

You probably know the films if you see them today, but might be unfamiliar with the actual names. The first film entitled "Rabbit Fire", which was a nice description of the plot and the pace of dialogue you were about to see, has Daffy Duck trying to convince hunter Elmer that it is in fact Rabbt Season, when it is actually Duck season. When Bugs pops up, he usually tricks Daffy into telling Elmer it's Duck Season, which gets Daffy's beak blown off in a number of inventive ways.

In "Rabbit Seasoning", the plot pretty much remains the same only in a slightly different bit of word play. This time Bugs tricks Daffy into saying "Shoot Me!" Rather than "Shoot Him!"

Finally we have "Duck Rabbit Duck" which follows the same formula only this time in a winter setting.



It's true director Jones and writer Maltese did not stretch with these cartoons by making them more different than the other, in fact they probably didn't even think of creating a trilogy of films. It would be logical to think they just thought up enough gags to fit into three films.

What's important about these films is how they changed the three major characters mostly Bugs and Daffy. In the early 40s films, Daffy was for a brief period the major star. In the films of Tex Avery or Bob Clampett, he was indeed Daffy in every sense of the word, he would wreck havoc everywhere he went, and was often thought of as the hero. The character would soon evolve in later cartoons and become more and more sane, and his motives changed to a more greedy and manipulative nature, until Jones decided he would be the perfect foil to Bugs.

Bugs it could be said had a similar reforming. In his early cartoons, he was also a bit crazy and devilish, but as Bugs became more and more the star, his character changed into the more cool and calm comic hero who was always in charge of the situation.

Chuck Jones said Bug Bunny represented what we aspired to be, while Daffy Duck represented what we were underneath. I think Jones probably felt there was more of him in Daffy than there ever was in Bugs, which is why when we watch these cartoons, we might secretly want Daffy just to win that one time, just how we might want to see Wile E. Coyote catch that blasted Road Runner just once. Jones seemed to understand that the best comedy came from pain, and because of that Daffy receives the most laughs in these films as Bugs pretty much plays it straight.

For Jones, this was probably just an exercise in character, and it's all there in each one's subtle expressions. Just with an eye flick, we can tell how annoyed Daffy is, or with a great stone face worthy of Keaton, we can tell when Bugs has the drop on him. Chuck Jones cartoons are probably the ones where I notice facial expressions the most, they're almost made to seem life like.

After these three films, the never ending feud between Bugs and Daffy never changed, and director Joe Dante even expanded on it more in his underrated homage to Warner Brothers cartoons "Looney Tunes: Back in Action".

This trilogy is one of the few that have actually stood the test of time, there's nothing desssspicaple about that.


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