Wile E. Coyote Vs. The Road Runner: A Cartoon Saga

With most Warner Brothers cartoons that people have grown up with, we are all brought to a truth that they all must end the same. Sylvester will never get his hands on Tweety, Elmer will never get Bugs, and that poor cat with the painted white stripe will never outrun Pepe Le Piu. But probably the one saga that stays in people's minds the most is the one that takes place in the dessert, with no dialogue and only an empty road with many cliffs. I'm speaking of course of the Coyote and the Road Runner who were created through the mind of Chuck Jones working once again with writer Michael Maltese.

The Coyote/Road Runner cartoons may be Jones' greatest contribution to the world of animation. Each of these cartoons work like a text book of animated physical gags and sound effects.

Each film is simple and follows its own set of rules. A hungry Coyote (some would say a tad obsessed) goes about several inventive ways to capture a fast and furious road runner who spends its time running up and down the trails of the dessert. Each plan the Coyote unleashes back fires. The only words uttered in each cartoon are "Beep,beep" which are sais by the road runner. The endless supply of gadgets the coyote uses to catch the road runner are all from the Acme Corporation. Each cartoon ends the same way, with the coyote defeated, and the road runner victorious, but of course they all end up doing it again another day.

What makes the coyote/road runner saga so memorable is the way Jones and Maltese create a cartoon world that follows a cartoon law of physics. The world seems to adapt more to the road runner's needs, and lesser to the coyote's. For instance, when the coyote paints a continuing road on hard canvas this cannot trick the road runner, for he can run right through it as if it were actual road, however when the coyote does it, he either runs into the canvas, or a vehicle comes from the painted road and runs him over.

The gags themselves are pulled off with sharp timing and unpredictability, it seemed Jones and Maltese had endless ways of putting the coyote through the ringer. The gags would work as either short, or long and drawn out. You never knew how each one would end, all you knew was the coyote was going to suffer for it. Some gags are set up near the beginning of the film but are not paid off till the very end. One such memorable gag comes from the cartoon "Stop, Look, and Hasten" concerning a pop-up metal wall that won't pop up when it's suppose to. The coyote jumps on it and looks around it, and you expect it to go off. Jones and Maltese take a cue from non other than Hitchcock here by knowing there's a bomb and leaving us in suspense when it will go off. Sure enough it does, and you can see when it does here....



Usually when someone talks of violence in cartoons, the coyote/road runner ones usually come up. The coyote is constantly puniished by his own devices. He has boulders falling on him, vehicles hitting him, blown up time and time again by bombs and or dynamite, and of course his greatest trademark is falling off those huge cliffs. However Jones never emphasizes the violence, he always stuck with character, and the violence is more thought of as being a humiliation for the coyote, which is why we can laugh. If we thought for a minute the coyote was actually hurt, that would take all the fun out of it.

The coyote/road runner cartoons always did what they set out to do, they were always fast, inventive, and economic. Jones himself said if he ever needed extra time to work on more ambitious cartoons such as "What's Opera Doc?" or "One Froggy Evening", he would usually dust off a road runner one quickly to give him more time.

These films remain a favorite in the great cartoon canon, the coyote and road runner are perhaps the most memorable of the animated foes, there's something about them that's just a little bit more subversive and edgy. Theirs is an on going chase, and they'll probably continue to do this dance for as long as cartoons exist.