Credit: DisneyToday marks the 35th anniversary of the release of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), the groundbreaking family film noir comedy film involving a blubbering cartoon rabbit (voiced by Charles Fleischer) and a hardboiled, drunken private detective (Bob Hoskins) who hates him. Robert Zemeckis’s hybrid live-action animation movie was critically acclaimed, enormously successful at the box office, and ultimately responsible for the chaotic mess the Marvel Cinematic Universe has found itself in. Considering that the modern film industry is dominated by Marvel, that’s a whole lot of mess.
That’s a big claim, I know. At first glance, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Iron Man (2008) don’t have much in common. Hoskins’ Eddie Valiant is no Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. And needless to say, Roger Rabbit was a one-and-done movie (which largely ignored its source material, a novel by Gary K Wolf), despite its massive success, and the MCU was explicitly created with wide-ranging franchise potential built in.
However, Who Framed Roger Rabbit laid the tracks on which the Marvel Cinematic Universe has driven to success and, at this point, arguably into an increasingly unmanageable, aesthetically displeasing mess. Let’s break down why.
Roger Rabbit Made Crossovers a Big Deal, Marvel Made Them Boring
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Perhaps the most significant aspect of Who Framed Roger Rabbit has been so normalized that it practically seems quaint: the crossover. Nowadays, we practically expect franchises to crossover characters and events, so we can see three different Peter Parkers hanging out, like in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) (not to mention every non-Parker imaginable in the Spider-Verse), and basically think, that’s kinda fun.
But when Roger Rabbit featured (for the first and still only time) Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny in the same scene, it was a momentous occasion. The same goes for the manic piano duel between Donald Duck and Daffy Duck, the cameos from Betty Boop (by original voice actress Mae Questel, no less), the eternally mopping brooms from Fantasia (1940), Droopy, Yosemite Sam, Pinocchio, and Woody Woodpecker, among many others.
However, the Marvel Cinematic Universe took what Roger Rabbit did and has run it into the ground. Marvel Studios has painted itself into a corner of boredom by crossing over characters with such regularity that there is no joy or surprise in it, just ticking off boxes.
Robert Zemeckis, writers Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman, producer Steven Spielberg, and animator Richard Williams surely had no idea their innovations would one day become boring, but it cannot be denied they opened the door for it.
Green Screen Has Become the New Normal, Not For Good
Who Framed Roger Rabbit was by no means the first film to utilize chroma key compositing (broadly speaking, what is known as green or blue screen), but it raised the technique to a dramatic new level that utterly demolished the barrier between flesh and blood actors and animated characters. Where films like The Great Train Robbery (1903) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940) used the idea of layering film as a special effect, it is inherent to the narrative of Roger Rabbit; in that world, it’s not just an aspect of filmmaking, it is their reality.
In between Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, George Lucas pushed green screen film even further, creating an entirely artificial Star Wars prequel universe for Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor to helplessly flail about in. But it was Bob Hoskins that essentially single-handedly created the acting style necessitated by being the only human on set while attempting to act realistically to a word only in the animators’ minds.
As can be seen from audiences’ exhausted, tepid responses to the completely CGI phantasmagoria of Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania, Marvel Studios has taken the ball from Zemeckis and Lucas and ran straight into the uncanny valley. Toon Town has evolved into the Quantum Realm, and nobody’s happy about it.
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Roger Rabbit Cast an Unknown as a Star, Just Like Marvel
The lead role of Eddie Valiant was first offered to Harrison Ford (likely due in part to the Spielberg connection), then to Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, and basically every recognizable leading man in Hollywood. Ultimately, the role went to the late, great Bob Hoskins, a respected British actor not known for leading huge marquee family films.
However, that ended up being a masterstroke of casting: in a movie swarming with some of the most iconic animated characters of all time, Hoskins’s Eddie Valiant was an everyman without the baggage of Indiana Jones, Saturday Night Live, or Beverly Hills Cop (1984). The anonymity of Hoskins ended up being key to him being the humanizing element of the film.
At first, Marvel Studios did pretty much the same thing, casting relatively low-profile character actors like Chris Evans and Mark Ruffalo in leading roles, which allowed their public reputation to not distract from the iconic qualities of Captain America and the Hulk. Of the original bunch, pretty much only Robert Downey Jr was cast due in part due to his known public persona.
But, of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now buckling under the weight of its accumulated stars, who have now grown so associated with the roles that signing them on for more projects has grown cost-ineffective (not to mention some being vocal about wanting to be done with the MCU). Because the MCU has gone on for so long, it can no longer rely on its stars to anchor its reality.
In the end, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a harbinger of terrible things to come for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but who could have expected that when it was released 35 years ago? It is not Robert Zemeckis’s and Steven Spielberg’s job to clean up after the MCU, but they definitely gave Marvel Studios the material to make a mess.