Introduction

Introduction | Appreciation | Comment on Who Framed Roger Rabbit

1988 color film for 96 minutes

Produced by American Touchstone Film Company.

Director: Robert Zemekis Animation Director: richard williams Screenwriter: Jeffrey Price Peter Seaman Photography: Dean Kandai The main actors: bob hoskins (Eddie), christopher lloyd (Dam), Charles Fleischer (voice for Roger), kathleen turner (voice for Jessica), Staby Kay (voice for Marvin Acme) and Allen Tilvin.

abstract

In the late 1940s, there was an area in Los Angeles belonging to the cartoon animal race, which was called "Thun City".

Roger Rabbit, a cartoon star, was ridiculed by his partner the doll because he suspected that his wife Jessica was having an affair and often lost her mind when filming. Malone, the owner of cartoon film company, hired Eddie, a private detective, to find out the truth, take pictures of Jessica's affair, and let Roger break off his relationship and concentrate on making cartoon series. Eddie agreed generously because his younger brother Teddy was assassinated by a cartoon character in Thun not long ago and was eager to catch up with the murderer as soon as possible.

Marvin Acme, general manager of the bar bliss company in Thun, was fascinated by the performance of the female singer Jessica. Marvin got rich by running toys, and all the land property rights in Thun belong to his company. Eddie borrowed a camera from his girlfriend dolores, followed it secretly and took photos of Marvin's tryst with Jessica. When Roger saw these photos, he couldn't help being jealous and drinking to drown his sorrows. Who knows that after drinking, the whole body rotates like a top and has hysterical attacks. That night, Marvin was assassinated.

Judge Dum, who was in charge of public security in Thun, decided that Roger was suspected of murder, so he sent a team of weasel detectives to arrest Roger. Roger ran away and hid in Eddie's closet. When Eddie came to open the cupboard door, he begged Eddie to try to save him. He swore that he was not a murderer. Eddie outwitted the weasel detective, took Roger to the bar, and confirmed from Jessica that Marvin had made a will before his death and gave the property right of Thun City to the cartoon family for free after his death. Malone, the owner of the cartoon film company, has been drooling over the property rights of Thun City, so he secretly set a trap and forced Jessica to seduce Marvin with color. However, after Marvin was assassinated, his will disappeared. Jessica has repeatedly made it clear to Eddie that her love for Roger will never disappear.

Unexpectedly, Justice Dum suddenly led a weasel team into the bar, found Roger hiding, and announced on the spot that Roger would be brought to justice. Eddie has a clever plan. Geandarme gives Roger a drink before the law enforcement. As soon as Roger drank, his whole body spun like a top and ran away.

Eddie found Malone, the boss of the cartoon film company, and asked him repeatedly, and finally forced him to tell the truth of the "peach trap". Just as he was about to point out the real murderer behind the scenes, someone fired a shot from the corner and Malone was killed immediately.

While Eddie interrogated Malone, Justice Dum captured Roger again. Jessica was anxious to save Roger, and Xuan was also captured. Dum finally showed his true colors and set up a private court in the warehouse of Blissful Company in an attempt to kill Roger and Jessica together with Defoe venom he developed. It turns out that he is the real murderer behind this series of assassinations. His evil plot is to monopolize the property rights of Thun, destroy the old city of cartoon race, rebuild new buildings and highways, and open fast food restaurants and gas stations on both sides of the road to make huge profits. At the moment, he is torturing Roger to make him confess and hand over Marvin's will.

At this critical moment, Eddie came disguised as a cartoon character. He used a clever trick to make Dum detectives laugh to death. Then, drive the road roller to directly crush it to Dum. I didn't expect Dum to be cultivated into a human form from comics. When he was crushed into a thin piece by a roller, he inflated himself and then "rose" into a human shape. He also proudly claimed that the cartoon character who assassinated his younger brother Teddy not long ago was his dumdum himself. Angry Eddie immediately soaked Dum in Defoe's venom and executed him with the method of "answer blows with blows".

Roger rabbit and Jessica were saved, and Eddie was reunited with his girlfriend Dorothy. Marvin's will was finally discovered: Roger mistakenly thought it was a piece of waste paper and wrote a love letter to Jessica on the back with lipstick. Roger Rabbit read out the love letter in public and announced that Marvin's will was about to be put into practice. The city of Thun suddenly cheered and the cartoon family sang and danced to celebrate the victory.

Distinguish and appreciate

As a modern fairy tale, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with its magnificent, fantastic colors and whimsical artistic imagination, not only fascinated children, but also attracted many adults to talk about it. The director of the film has ingenious and creative ideas in the overall grasp of art and modeling design: the narrative strategy is to reproduce the golden age of Disney's cartoon kingdom in the 1940s, and the latest film technology in the 1980s is adopted to skillfully entwine and fuse real characters and cartoon animal characters, giving animated films a new look and charm.

As we all know, in the long history of Hollywood movies in the United States, the late thirties and forties marked the glorious period of comic development. Disney, a famous cartoon artist, created famous fairy tale artistic images on the screen, such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi the Deer and Pinocchio. These fairy tale images have a prominent common feature: funny and full of comedy humor, vividly embodying various beneficial moral fables or life revelations. They have exerted an important influence not only in America, but also in many parts of the world.

Roger Rabbit shows its unusual significance through the reconstruction and revival of Disney cartoon art. Roger Rabbit became a well-known fairy tale star in the United States in the summer of 1988, and won the first place in the best-selling movies in the American film market that year. It took nearly three years for this new cartoon film to be put forward, conceived, produced in London, England and Los Angeles, USA, and finally synthesized. The total production cost is as high as $45 million. Especially in the technical production and synthesis of images, how to control the coordination between live-action performances and cartoon characters on the same screen, film creators have made fruitful contributions and have been praised as "a milestone in the history of film technology development" by American film critics.

This film is based on Gary K. Wolf's best-selling novel of the same name. As far as narrative construction is concerned, the film focuses on the situation that the anthropomorphic Roger Rabbit was framed and hunted for no reason. At the same time, parallel interweaving describes the heroic feat of private detective Eddie from personal revenge to justice for the comic world. Finally, the rescue of Roger Rabbit and his cartoon family is the ending of "happy ending". This plot/narrative framework generally follows the type mode of black detective film+comedy film, which obviously does not have much profound social significance. However, we can't ignore that this double-line juxtaposition plot idea and its artistic embodiment have a kind of human touch and certain allegory, especially the narrative backbone of the whole film is Roger Rabbit and the endangered crisis of his comic city, and the modeling of "Defoe" venom that Justice Dum wants to kill comics all project a certain secular color. Here, the fate of Roger and his cartoon race, which are in trouble for no reason, is obviously an implicit and tortuous metaphor for racial problems in western society (such as indifference, discrimination and human rights inequality to blacks and some ethnic minorities); The love between Roger and his beautiful and sexy wife Jessica has become the "fuse" of all kinds of contradictions. In animation modeling, there is a comic exaggeration. For example, her red lips can be used as a "kiss" outside the play, and her huge nipples can be stirred up. These are obviously promoted as a symbol and metaphor of the "sex" problem in western society. Although the story is set in the cartoon city of 1947, the entanglement and conflict between real characters and cartoon characters, as well as the comic resolution of this conflict, all have the characteristics of western society in the 1980s, and a dreamy "happy ending" is reached at the end of the film, which satisfies the social catharsis of the audience (especially the small social people and the vulnerable groups).

The film is directed by two directors. One is Robert Zemekis, who successfully produced Legend of Gems and Back to the Future. His sense of humor, originality and rich imagination were highly praised. The other is richard williams, a British cartoon genius, whose cartoon A Christmas Carol won the 1972 Academy Award. The executive producer of this film is the famous director Steven Allan Spielberg. Their tacit artistic cooperation has made a new exploration for the possibility of artistic expression of cartoon (animation) films and formed some characteristics of artistic creation.

One of artistic creativity: the combination of cartoon characters and real characters not only achieves a seamless state in the technical production of animation, but also skillfully organizes the relationship between them in the plot-narrative mechanism with aesthetic significance. In the early Disney movies, there were scenes such as Disney and Donald Duck performing on the same stage, sailors and cartoon dogs dancing in pairs, but most of them were limited to expressing the novelty of cartoon skills or the interest of singing and dancing, and there was no narrative relationship between real characters and cartoon characters. In Roger Rabbit, the "Thun City" of cartoon family life is endowed with some illusory and real environmental atmosphere, and cartoon characters are personified and intertwined with the real world of human beings. Roger rabbit and Jessica, a cartoon-like beauty, became husband and wife. Roger was framed, the animation city was on the verge of destruction, or it originated from the greed of Malone, the owner of the animation film company, or the ambition of Dum, the judge in charge of public security in Thun, to monopolize comic world, which obviously constituted a criticism (though not necessarily profound) of capitalist relations and capital evil.

The second artistic creation: shaping the tragicomedy of Roger Rabbit. It can be said that this is the birth of a new cartoon star after Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. His innocent situation, which symbolizes the tragic fate of small people in society and vulnerable groups in a helpless position in society, is presented everywhere in a unique way of comic comedy and mirror language. Roger rabbit is sincere, kind and cheerful, very lively and lovely. The modeling design of this cartoon character is strong in action and interesting. Even in the predicament of being hunted, he joked with Eddie in handcuffs. As a result, they were handcuffed together and there was no key to open. When the weasel team came to search, they performed a wonderful comedy hiding in the washing machine. When he took refuge in a bar, he also made funny song and dance performances for people and entertained himself by "smashing" plates with his head, wondering what his troubles were. When he and Jessica were "hanged" in the death battle that was about to be executed, he still expressed his love to Jessica enthusiastically, naive and infatuated. In particular, Roger's two drunken modeling jokes, one is the pain of crying out for love through drunkenness, and the other is Dum, the magic hand who uses drunkenness to display justice. Roger seems to be endowed with a "special function", giving full play to the specialty of animation modeling and exaggerating comedy as much as possible, which makes Roger's character vivid and more attractive in comic art.

The third artistic creativity: Eddie valente, a private detective, portrayed the heroic image with the color of "anti-hero" and was given the role of white rescuer. In the relatively closed and fictional world of cartoon city, Roger Rabbit was in trouble from the beginning, unable to save himself and fight, and was in a passive situation. In this way, Eddie, who was down and out at first, became a white hero who saved Roger from fire and water with the advancement of the plot-narrative. At first, I was bent on revenge for my dead brother, and later I was more determined to uphold justice for the disadvantaged animation race represented by Roger. To * * *, he dueled with the ugly Justice Dum, wearing black hat and sunglasses, and finally killed him, becoming the most distinctive white hero in American movie mythology to help the poor. Bob hoskins, a famous British actor, became a popular "superstar" overnight because of his successful portrayal of Eddie.

It is worth noting that the modern fairy tale Roger Rabbit still follows the narrative mode of American movies on the whole, and often replaces the sober and severe analysis of realistic contradictions with an illusory (generally eager) way to solve contradictions. The happy ending of Roger's salvation in the film is more like a modern fable, and the fatal weakness and anti-culture of American movies can be seen here.