marvel: ‘infinity war is the most ambitious crossover event in history’
me:
It’s true! Especially given a) the technology they had at the time to pull this off, and b) that they had characters from TWO separate companies as opposed to different characters from the same comics publisher.
So yeah, Roger Rabbit wins the ambitious crossover award, hands down. Sorry Marvel.
The agreement with Disney and Warner Bros was that they could only use their biggest characters (Mickey and Donald, Bugs and Daffy) if the other corrosponding character had the exact same amount of screentime. This is why, in the movie, Bugs and Mickey are sharing scenes, and Daffy and Donald are sharing scenes.
It’s also worth mentioning that every single animator in the industry that wasn’t already working on something was called in to work on this film. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
take a look at this crowd shot
that’s nuts! It’s also a legitimately great movie, a noir comedy that ties in the actual history of Los Angeles alongside the history of animation comfortably alongside the gratuitous silliness. And Bob Hoskins is a fucking CHAMP for his acting in this, one of the earlier examples of green-screen acting with characters who mostly aren’t there and he can make you totally forget that he can’t see what’s happening a lot of the time.
Bob Hoskins is also a fucking champ because what he could see was Charles Fleischer (Roger Rabbit) delivering lines off-camera dressed like this:
This was his work environment.
A casual reminder that this was LONG before inter-company crossovers became a thing. The very idea of Bugs and Mickey officially sharing screen time was UNTHINKABLE in the 80s. And then throw in Betty Boop, Droopy Dog, Woody Woodpecker, and Felix the Cat, all from different studios/rightsholders? Yowza. (If only King Features had let them put Popeye in.)
