Tom & Jerry Movie (2021?)

They're buddies pretty much everywhere that isn't a short after the usual intro chase.

I recall some movie or other where Tina Fey made a joke about the universality of Tom and Jerry's mutual antagonism, after Amy Poehler had said something that showed she had misinterpreted them as best friends. When I heard it, I thought "Okay, Tina Fey has never seen a Tom and Jerry cartoon made after 1970, and Amy Poehler has only seen stuff made after 1970."

Yes, with such a Long Runner as Tom & Jerry, their relationship very much changed depending on who was at the helm at the moment...

Having watched the original cartoons, I'd have to go with and disagree. The whole idea of them being sort of friends in between being bitter enemies, as well as treating their chases as akin to a game, is pretty old, and exists because the series has a kind of unique approach to morality that differs from something like Bugs Bunny.

Most of the time Tom was perfectly willing to downright kill and eat Jerry. And Jerry actually was mostly indifferent if not gleeful to Tom's suffering, whether self inflicted, inflicted by Jerry himself, or by others.

Most instances of them being friendly or at least sympathetic to each other come from the eventual softening of the original era much later on, or from incarnations afterwards.

TBF, Tom's job is to kill Jerry and keep him from stealing his owner's food and stuff. Hard to blame him for doing what is supposed to be his duty as a pet cat

Again, having actually watched all of the original cartoons, this is incorrect.

The original run had installments like Springtime For Thomas, which many of the later depictions of them as frenemies takes inspiration from, as well as others like Little School Mouse: the series was portraying the two as having a complicated relationship as early as The Lonesome Mouse, the tenth ever cartoon, or even Dog Trouble - the fifth.

This continued throughout the entire run: putting them together (even briefly) was a common trend for original series cartoons which feature them dealing with a third character. The original run was well aware that as much humor could come from these classic enemies being oddly friendly, and generally speaking Tom was depicted as a Punch-Clock Villain (while still genuinely being a Jerkass) who didn't give a crap as long as it was convenient to him: the essence of how Tom and Jerry are depicted in modern day adaptations comes from that classic cartoon (whose name escapes me - A Mouse In The House, maybe?) where they begin the episode as friends, but then Tom turns on Jerry the moment his master shows up and makes him work or get kicked out. That singular cartoon gets aped for characterizations so much nowadays it might as well be on every collector's set.

You see a decrease in those kinds of cartoons later, when Chuck Jones took over and reinterpreted Jerry as being more like the Road Runner. It might have increased in adaptations made after that point, but it certainly was a thing long before it.

Don't forget that these were film cartoons. The characters being written as especially hateful towards each other in one cartoon doesn't mean they would remember those actions in the next. There was no continuity.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 2nd 2020 at 10:27:45 AM

Every 2021 movie from WB, including Tom & Jerry, will be coming to both HBO Max AND theaters!

Reminds me that Tom and Jerry acting with live actors is pretty old concept at this point

And apparently they were supposed to be in Roger Rabbit along with Popeye, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Superman, but were unable to make it in due to scheduling conflicts.

Now Tom and Jerry have their own live action/2D animated hybrid movie. I have a feeling in-universe Roger would so watch it to support the fact they couldn't be in his movie.

The Toons in Roger Rabbit seem to be mostly Disney (the more obscure ones being from Silly Symphonies), with some Looney Tunes thrown in the mix. Droopy was pretty much the only one they could get from MGM. Too bad, a cameo by Tom & Jerry or Popeye would have cemented the whole "all toons live in Toon Town" idea even better.

EDIT: Betty Boop was also in Roger Rabbit, I forgot about her!

Edited by Snicka on Dec 4th 2020 at 5:00:14 PM

Is that a joke? How would cartoon characters have scheduling conflicts? Or did you mean they couldn't get permission to use those characters?

The Fleischer Bros. Koko the Clown was in Roger Rabbit too, albeit in color.

Edited by Robbery on Dec 4th 2020 at 1:09:53 AM

I think they meant in universe where the toons are actors

From what I saw, it looked like there was a planned funeral scene for Acme that had all those characters in attendance but it was cut.

x7 What I found odd about that scene is how unusually big Jerry is (about the size of a human child, opposed to mouse-sized like in most Tom & Jerry shorts). I read somewhere that it's because the original plan was to use Mickey Mouse for that scene, but MGM couldn't get the rights from Disney, so they used the cartoon mouse that MGM had the rights to.

If Jerry remained mouse sized it would look ridiculous,having him child sized makes a ton of sense to me

Straight from Brazil's CCXPWorlds, we have some more behind the scenes (and short clips) of the Tom and Jerry Movie.

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/warner-bros-mortal-kombat-tom-jerry-release-dates-1234842476/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

The movie now comes out Friday February 26.

Interesting...I wonder why they are moving the movie to an earlier release date?

Raya and the Last Dragon was moved to March 5, and is coming out in theaters and Disney+ on the same day. They probably don't want to compete with that, and moved up to February 26.

That makes sense. Disney usually dominates in the box office, so it was probably wise of them to move this movie away from Raya.

x5 I find it a little strange that the rough sketches look a lot more like a real cat and mouse than the 3D models do.

Here's the Cartoon Network sneak peek.

Does the film even bother to explain why there's animated animals running around in a live-action setting?

Sure Roger Rabbit and Looney Tunes back In Action didn't have explanations either, but at least those films both had Hollywood settings. This film... doesn't?