Soup or Sonic

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Soup or Sonic
series =


caption =
director = Chuck Jones
Phil Monroe
story_artist =
animator =
voice_actor =
musician =
producer = Chuck Jones
distributor = Warner Bros. Pictures
release_date = May 21, 1980
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 9 minutes 11 seconds
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0081543

"Soup or Sonic" is a Warner Bros. cartoon, starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. The cartoon was part of the television special "Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over", which aired May 21, 1980.

The animated short was directed by Chuck Jones and Phil Monroe. The title is a play on the term "supersonic."

Plot

The usual chase starts for a few seconds until it stops for the (appropriate) Latin names: "Ultra-sonicus Ad Infinitum" and "Nemesis Ridiculii", plus a "bonus" name for the Road Runner's beep: "Beepius-beepius".

The chase then moves around mountain corners until it ends on a mountainside, with the Road Runner ducking behind a corner and leaving a cloud of dust for the coyote to run into. Wile E. rides the dust cloud all the way through the air, and finally stops to determine where he is. He opens a "door" in the cloud to see that he is defying gravity, and then closes the door and retreats back into the dispersing cloud, and changes his question mark of surprise to an exclamation point. Then he falls to the ground.

The pair pull up onto opposite outcroppings, and Wile E. attempts to pole-vault from his to his opponent's, but this causes the end of his outcropping to crumble and the coyote to fall down. Seeing his impending humiliation approaching, Wile E. attempts to make the best of it by climbing up the pole; however, he keeps falling back to the bottom of it. Eventually, the repeated revolutions cause the two to whirl through the air and for the pole to shred itself on a cliff. Finally, the two stop rotating, and the coyote then pulls himself onto the narrow bar left of the pole and accepts his fate.

A recurring gag in this cartoon now begins: the coyote attempting to launch himself from a skyrocket towards the Road Runner on the opposite end of the canyon. Virgil Ross animated this gag, providing distinctive ear motions. The first attempt fails when only the rocket launches, leaving the coyote to crunch on top of the cover, with his heart sinking, and to fall, annoyed, for a third time.

As the Road Runner burns rubber on the ground roads, Wile E. is pulling back on a falling safe attached to a rope and pulley. Eventually, however, the weight overcomes him and the coyote is sheared through the pulley, and he then falls onto a see-saw rock face with the still-attached safe next to him. Then, he slides off the rock face to fall into the canyon a fourth time, and then to be smashed by the safe, leaving the coyote's torso thin and flat.

A second attempt at the skyrocket gag leads to the rocket creaking out of its east aim and facing down before firing the coyote down for a fifth time.

Now, Ross animates a sequence in which Wile E. sticks a firecracker into the center hole of a Frisbee (from the Freleng Manufacturing Co.) and throws it at his nemesis, but before he releases the disc, the firecracker slides out of the hole and sizzles at Wile E's foot. The coyote doesn't notice until he puts his foot down on the firework and instinctively pulls it away just before it explodes, leaving him dazed but unhurt -- except for a fiery tail. The coyote walks into the desert like Charlie Chaplin... and then jumps yelping in pain.

A third try at the skyrocket: The rocket fires, leaving the coyote suspended in midair, though the cloud of smoke left by the rocket obscures this. Wile E. pokes his foot through it and soon suffers gravity for the sixth time as he holds up a sign stating "GOODBYE" and then flipping to "AGAIN".

Another ACME product is taken delivery of: ACME Giant Fly Paper, which the coyote leaves in the road and sits down on a rock to savor his impending victory. He hears a braking sound and rushes out to capture his prey...but it's an actual giant fly, who offers a ferocious grin and then wraps the poor coyote up with his own fly paper.

Skyrocket, take 4: Wile E. accidentally ignites his tail instead of the fuse, and when he smells his tail burning, leaps up in pain only to smash his head on another outcropping. Fortunately, this causes him to return to the rocket and to light the fuse with his tail. Unfortunately, the rocket is, and has always been, off target, and it bores through the cliff under the Road Runner, who allows the coyote to be humiliated privately. The rocket finally explodes, blackening the coyote and throwing him back into the air. Displeased, Wile E. holds up a yellow sign asking "HOW DID I EVER GET INTO THIS LINE OF WORK?" before falling for a seventh time.

A new plan is formulated, where Wile E. attempts to blow up the Road Runner by pelting explosive tennis balls at him. The first ball seamlessly blows up its test target with no issues (yet), and the coyote is eager to try them at work. Hearing the beeping of his enemy, he procures another ball and hits it towards the Road Runner, and it bounces directly next to the bird and then onto the arm of a cactus, which flings it directly back at its owner. A little agitated, the coyote returns the ball and it is caught by power lines and returned to the coyote, who cannot catch it. The ball pops directly back into its original slot in the box of balls as Wile E. arrives on the scene and takes stock. Sensing something grave is about to happen, Wile holds up a pair of signs: "For Sale One used Tennis Racket" and "CHEAP!" before, as the screen puts it, a "GIGANTIC EXPLOSION!" occurs.

The whole cartoon, however, is best known for its ending gag. Wile E. Coyote is chasing the Road Runner through a series of pipelines, which causes both of them to emerge in a greatly shrunken state. Upon discovering their situation, they agree to re-enter the pipeline and be transformed back into full size (Wile waving the Road Runner in first, in proud tradition).

Viewers first see Wile E. emerge from the pipeline, still in small size, and then the Road Runner in normal size! Upon discovering this turn of fortune, the Road Runner stops and allows his rival to "catch" him. The coyote doesn't notice anything until he steps over his opponent's legs and rushes back to "finally" "catch" the Road Runner! The coyote is ecstatic and pulls out his knife and fork to eat his opponent...until he realizes that he is hopelessly outgunned in size. The Road Runner gives his antagonist an amplified "beep-beep", causing Wile to drop his utensils in shock. He can only hold up signs to the audience stating, "OK, wise guys - you always wanted me to catch him -" "Now what do I do?"

(This is actually a reprisal of the opening gag, where both Wile E. and Road Runner chase each other through the pipeline, are shrunken and re-emerge full-sized.)

ources

* Beck, Jerry and Will Friedwald, "Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons," Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1989. (ISBN 0-8050-0894-2).

External links

*imdb title|0081540