My Thoughts on “Coyote vs. Acme”

 

(This is the poster for Coyote vs. Acme.) 

 

 

 

I'm going to take a short break from my Cowboy Bebop (1998) review to write a quick review of Coyote vs. Acme. Don't worry, I'm almost done with it the review, I'm on the last section, which is on the video game, Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence AKA Cowboy Bebop: The Song Remains The Same. I just need to finish watching the longplay, and then I'll start writing it. That shouldn't take too long because the longplay I'm watching is only 4:48:12 (which is actually pretty short for a game) and I'm at the 4:09:07 mark. And this should take too long either since I really don't have that much to say about this movie. I know I said that about Godzilla: Unleashed, and my review of that game almost took me two weeks to finish, but that was only because I had a lot more to say about that game and the Godzilla franchise as a whole than I initially anticipated going into it. That was a spur of the moment thing, it was very impromptu, I literally made the decision to write that review on the spot while I was watching the longplay to that game, and it was supposed to be a quick thing that I was only going to take me a couple of days at most to finish and then I would get back on my review of Cowboy Bebop (1998) which was the real thing I wanted to focus on and get finished.

 

But, that ended up not being the case because of how I did end up having to say about the game and the franchise as whole. I am proud of how it turned out though, I think it's one of the best reviews I've written in a long time. I'm also proud of how the Cowboy Bebop (1998) review is turning out, despite the delays and ups and downs I've had with that review, with me not being as enthusiastic to watch the show or write the review in the beginning as I was when I first came up with the idea of reviewing Cowboy Bebop (1998) now, because my interests had shifted somewhat, and I wasn't as hyperfixated on Cowboy Bebop as I needed to be to go full steam ahead on that review. But I did find my footing, I did gain the enthusiasm I needed to start writing the review, and so far I've been having a lot of fun working on it. 

 

The section on the movie, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie AKA Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' On Heaven's Door was the section I had the most fun writing because the movie was fresh in my mind and I enjoyed revisiting after so long. It had been a couple of years since I rewatched Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, and I enjoyed as much this time around as I did last time I saw it. If not, a bit more. It was indeed different to rewatching the show because it is just a movie, an hour and 55 minute long movie, and therefore wasn't as much of a commitment as watching a 26 episode series. I thought I could knock the entire series out in a week because I usually binge watch shows I buy on Blu-Ray 💿. I watch every episode that's on a disc 💿 until it's all done. But, watching the show took the longest because I wasn't as enthusiastic about rewatching it in the beginning as I was when I came up with the idea of reviewing the show and its related movie this year because I wasn't that hyperfixated on it anymore. I was hyperfixated on other things like Independence Day, Godzilla, and disaster movies. But I forced myself to start watching it so I could start the review, and once I got going, I really did start enjoying it again. And since I have watched most of the longplay of Serenade of Reminiscence already, it shouldn't take as long to finish as it would if I waited until now to start watching it. I did have to go back watch some parts to get refreshed on the plot, and the main villain's scheme since it had been so long since I had watched the longplay and I was continuing from where I left off after a couple of months. 

 

This review though, should be a quick thing because I really don't have that much to say about this particular movie. Not as much as I thought I would when I added it to my list and I saw the trailers, and watched some of the reviews. I didn't even plan on watching it this weekend, I originally wanted to watch Onslaught (2026). Because my grandma told me back on Friday September 18, 2026 that she was to take me down to Albuquerque to see a movie, and the movie I chose was Onslaught (2026) because it was a movie that I was interested in watching since it was directed by Adam Wingard and the trailers made it look really good. Even if it did look similar to other things, like Universal Soldier (1992). The concept sounded really similar to Universal Soldier (1992) to me, and that was the one comparison that none of the reviews that I watched made even though it's right there. It's pretty evident to me, clear as day. It's about genetically engineered or altered super soldiers 🧬 that lack any and all humanity (who had the humanity stripped out of them because of genetics 🧬, training, or conditioning or a combination of all three) and are essentially killing machines that won't stop killing unless someone kills them. 

 

Only difference here is that the super soldiers in Onslaught (2026) are not soldiers who died during war (who were killed in action), or in the case of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren's characters, Luc Deveraux and Andrew Scott, who killed each other to stop the other from committing war crimes, and then were resurrected through a special scientific process, like the UniSols in the Universal Soldier movies, and there's no good UniSol to help out the regular humans. Luc Deveraux witnessed Andrew Scott massacring South Vietnamese villagers and tried to prevent him from executing two more, but ultimately failed, and the two of them shoot each other to death and that's how their bodies get picked up for the UniSol program. Instead it seems that they’re soldiers who did serve, but were selected to undergo genetic experiments 🧬, and they simply got turned into these hulking super soldiers with non-human abilities, and lost all their humanity.  

 

Because one of the three escaped super soldiers in the film had a relationship of some kind with the main character, Adria Arjona’s character, Celeste Cross because they both served in the same war (either Iraq 🇮🇶 or Afghanistan 🇦🇫, but probably Iraq 🇮🇶), and they in the same unit together, and they helped each other out. Which makes me think that there’s a scene in the movie where Celeste recognizes one of the super soldiers as one of her old war buddies, and is like, “What did they do to you?” If you told me that this movie started life as a Universal Soldier spinoff movie about a group of rogue UniSols that escaped from containment and started going on a killing spree, and a PTSD stricken military veteran having to defend herself, her daughter, and her trailer park community from them, I would believe you. Sure it is more of a slasher movie, but that's what Universal Soldier movie would be if you didn't have Luc Deveraux or even Andrew Scott, and they were all like the other UniSols that didn't talk or show much of a personality. 

 

The UniSols that aren't Luc Deveraux or Andrew Scott are pretty much slasher villains akin to Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, or even Leatherface (which are the exact comparisons that every review made when they talked about this movie) with military grade weapons and equipment. Waiting to the be unleashed. Actually, Andrew Scott is kind of a slasher villain too because he kills because he's a psychopath, and he cuts off his victims ears 👂 and makes necklaces out of them, and wears them around his neck. Sure, he's talkative, but there are slasher villains who are talkative. Ever heard of Freddy Krueger? Andrew Scott is more of the Freddy type of slasher villain (the talkative one who kind toys with his victims, or at least verbally torments them as he's stalking them, or just makes endless quips and one liners while they're doing it), while the other UniSols are more like the Jason kind of slasher villain (the silent one who just kills and moves on and doesn't bother making a quip about it or anything). Their only weakness of course being that their bodies overheat from increased activity, due to the process that was used to reanimate their bodies, and if they don't have time to cool down, they'll die. But the super soldiers in Onslaught (2026) don't have that weakness since they aren't reanimated corpses like the UniSols are, so letting their bodies overheat and not giving them any time to cool down wouldn't work. I don't know what the super soldiers' weaknesses are in Onslaught (2026) because I haven't seen the movie.  

 

This movie gives a taste of that, of would what it be like if a group of UniSols got loose, and just killed everyone who they came across, with no one to guide them and give them direction on who to kill. They'll just kill until everyone's dead. But apparently, this has more of a connection to Adam Wingard’s pre-MonsterVerse work, particularly his two horror films, You’re Next and The Guest. Especially The Guest, since Adam Wingard considers Onslaught (2026) to be a spiritual successor to The Guest, and many fans speculate that it even takes place in the same universe as The Guest. For that reason, I have since added The Guest to my review list, and I do fully intend on reviewing it sometime in the future. Though compared to either of his previous two horror films, Onslaught (2026) is a lot more of an action movie, like it's an action horror film rather than a pure horror film. And frankly, as a fan of action films, those are favorite kind. 

 

I also saw similarities to the 1998 Paul W.S. Anderson movie, Soldier, with Kurt Russell as the titular soldier, a guy ♂︎ who was kidnapped from birth and trained since early childhood to be the ultimate soldier along with several other kidnapped children, which a lot of people say is actually set in the Blade Runner universe. It pretty much is a Blade Runner spinoff, as Paul W.S. Anderson is on record saying that he viewed Soldier (1998) as a spiritual successor to Blade Runner while he was making it, and indeed the movie contains a lot of references to indicate that is indeed set in the same universe as Blade Runner. Like the fact that it feature Replicants as the main antagonists. The way that Onslaught (2026) is similar to Soldier (1998) in my opinion, is that main plot is about an ordinary human going up against genetically engineered or enhanced super soldiers 🧬, and the ordinary human ultimately prevails. 

 

Kurt Russell's character in Soldier (1998), Sergeant Todd "3465" isn't exactly a normal guy ♂︎, he's a guy ♂︎ who was kidnapped as a baby and trained to be the ultimate soldier since childhood, and he barely talks himself, but he is still more of a normal human than the Replicant soldiers that are replacing him and his fellow soldiers trained since childhood. While Celeste Cross is fully a regular human. She was just a normal enlisted soldier in the US Army 🇺🇸. Sure she became a sniper, which isn't exactly a normal thing for your average Army soldier, especially a female soldier ♀︎ during the War on terror, or even now given how much more sexist the US military 🇺🇸 has become under Trump and Pete Hegseth (not even letting women ♀︎ be in leadership roles, let alone combat roles), but flesh and blood 🩸, she is just a regular human. She hasn't been genetically enhanced 🧬 like the super soldiers she's going up against, and she has PTSD, which is a huge weakness for her and prevents her from being the mom that she needs to be for daughter, and she has to overcome over the course of the movie. 

 

BTW, did you know Paul W.S. Anderson and his wife, Milla Jovovich, the actress (yes, that one) have a daughter? They actually have a few children actually, three, but their oldest, Ever Anderson is the one who is currently pursuing an acting career. Following in her mom's footsteps. I didn't even know that they even had a daughter, let alone three kids, until I saw a news report on Apple News talking about the 2026 Venice Film Festival, which Ever did attend since she was in a movie that was premiering there. It's called Father Joe, it was written and co-produced by Luc Besson, the director of La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional, and two movies that starred Ever Anderson's mom, The Fifth Element and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. To name but a few of his work. Truth be told, Luc Besson's written and produced more movies than he's directed, and the movies he's directed are kind of a mixed bag. 

 

Some of his movies are great, while others...not so much. I would say my favorite movie of his that I've seen is The Fifth Element, which I reviewed on my blog already if you want go and read that. I am proud of that review and how it turned out, I put a lot of work into it, and it's one of my most viewed posts, and it wasn't even from actual views. It was from going back and editing it, and going to check it to see how it looks in the actual post. And also, Luc Besson is just kind of a creep. I talked about before in my Weekend in Taipei review and The Fifth Element review, but Luc Besson has been accused of some no so great things, some really bad stuff (sexual harassment or assault allegations) by multiple women ♀︎, sort of makes it hard for me to continue supporting his work from a moral and ethical perspective. 

 

The fact that he cast his ex-wife's daughter in this movie is pretty suspect 🤨. That's weird, like why would you cast your ex-wife's daughter in your movie, if you didn't have some ulterior motive? He wasn't even married to Milla Jovovich for that long 💍, they were only married 💍 for a couple of years, after he cheated his previous wife, Maïwenn (who was the Diva, Plavalaguna in The Fifth Element) and divorced her to be with Milla Jovovich in 1997, and they divorced in 1999 after they finished making The Messenger. The fact that Milla Jovovich's marriage 💍 with Luc Besson only lasted two years ✌️, while her marriage 💍 with Paul W.S. Anderson has managed to last 17 years and counting, says a lot about the difference between the two men ♂︎ and health of the two marriages 💍. Her marriage with Anderson was built on true love ❤️, whereas her marriage 💍 with Besson was mostly built on lust, with him lusting after her.

 

There isn't a ton of information to go off of about Father Joe. The only thing that it says about the plot synopsis that it's set in New York during the 1990s and it's about a priest confronting a mob boss. Kiefer Sutherland, another nepobaby but one who people actually like, plays the heroic priest standing up to the evil mob boss, named Father Joe of course. Ever Anderson's role has not been disclosed at this time, although this is her first "adult" role as she is currently 18 years old at the time of me writing this, and will turn 19 this year on November 3rd since that's her birthday 🎂🥳. But she was 17 when they presumably started filming this, and either turned 18 during production or during post-production. Her earliest roles were her playing kid roles since she was just a kid. 

 

She played the younger version of Alice (whose full name is actually Alicia Marcus since she's revealed to be the daughter of Dr. James Marcus, a character from the video games) as well as the Red Queen in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, she played the younger version of Natasha Romanoff in Black Widow (2021), and she played Wendy Darling in the recent live action Peter Pan movie, Peter Pan & Wendy. But Father Joe will truly begin her transition to doing more "adult roles." Hopefully none with Luc Besson after that 😬. She would make for a pretty decent Bond girl ♀︎ in my opinion, especially considering that it seems that they will be going with a younger Bond for this new reboot film series under Amazon, and by the time they get around to making Bond 27 or 28, she'll be the perfect age to star in one of them as a Bond girl ♀︎. 

 

And I wanted to support it because it's the only A24 movie that isn't some pretentious art piece, nor is some overhyped elevated horror film that all the film snobs and people on social media like. I'm looking at you Backrooms 😠🫵. But was just a fun ride that had no allusions about what it really was, and wasn't trying to be anything more than what it was, and didn't try to appeal to film snobs or idiots on social media. And is actually good, which automatically disqualifies Y2K (2024). But then, on Saturday September 19, 2026 (the same day as the Feast in Laguna Pueblo BTW), when I went to go check the times for Onslaught (2026), it wasn't there. I was confused 😕, why wouldn't it be there? It came out on September 4, 2026, and that was only a couple of weeks ago, surely it should still be playing. So, maybe I figured that it wasn't playing at any Regal theaters, but was only playing at Cinemark theaters, so I checked the times on the Cinemark app, and it wasn't there either. I even checked AMC theaters, since we have an AMC theater in Albuquerque, on the south side, and no dice. The only theater I could find that it was playing in, in all of New Mexico, was a Sky Cinema theater in Santa Fe, and I wasn't willing to drive all the way to Santa Fe just to see Onslaught (2026). 

 

I couldn't believe that wasn't playing anywhere, as if it even in theaters at all, even though it was, I was distraught 😖. I was angry 😡, I started hitting my desk, punching my bed 👊🛏️, and kicking my wall, I started crying 😭, I was devastated that it wasn't anywhere near where we lived. You might think after reading that, "Is it a bit immature and childish to cry 😭 and getting all violent over a movie you didn't get to see while it was still in theaters?" Even I was surprised at how broken up I got about the movie not playing anymore, but cut me some slack. I hadn't seen in a movie in theaters since June, the last movie I saw in theaters before Coyote vs. Acme was The Mandalorian and Grogu, in celebration of Father's Day since my dad's a huge Star Wars fan, which I did write a review for as well, you can go read as well. 

 

There were three movies in the past couple of months, including Onslaught (2026) that I was interested in seeing while there in theaters that I missed out on because of circumstances that were out of my control. One of them was Motor City, that action movie set in Detroit in the late 1970s starring Alan Ritchson, which came out in July, and other was Mutiny (2026), the second Jason Statham movie released this year after Shelter (2026) in January, that's set on a cargo ship, and is about this former police officer, former commando, and current bodyguard to a Thai billionaire 🇹🇭, freeing a bunch of human trafficking victims being transported on board this ship in the shipping containers, while trying to avenge his client's death and clear his name since he was framed for the murder. 

 

I really wanted to see that movie, and me and my grandma talked about seeing it, especially since we missed out on Shelter (2026) and it's directed by the same guy ♂︎ who directed Plane ✈️🇵🇭, which we both liked. I talked about it my 2023 New Year's Recap. But, we missed out on that movie too, mostly because we blew all our money 💵 going to the Santa Fe Indian Market that we didn't even really get to enjoy since my aunt sold out all potteries as soon as got there and got done eating lunch, because she won first place in this competition related to the Indian Market, and all the rich people 🤑 who live in Santa Fe and attend the Market every year bought all of her potteries based on the fact that she won first place in that competition. Plus my dad was with us, and he gets bored very easily and likes to rush us around because he's a very impatient man ♂︎, so we didn't get to really enjoy it as much as we wanted to. 

 

If that wasn't enough, I went to the La Fonda hotel, which was sort of the hub of the entire market, to use the bathroom 🚽, and I kind of have runny and loose poop because I went a long time without eating, and then I had a huge meal for lunch, and for some reason, that causes my stool to get really runny (if I don't have breakfast and I wait several hours to eat anything and I have a huge meal, my stool gets runny), and I got it on my underwear 🩲 while I was getting up to wipe myself. And I didn't have any spare underwear 🩲 that I could just change into, and I didn't want to go out and buy any since I already bought some the week prior after I had runny stool and got poop spots on my underwear 🩲. I didn't want to buy another pack of underwear 🩲 after I just bought some the week prior for the same type of accident. So, I had to walk and sit around the rest of the day having to wear dirty underwear 🩲 with poop spots all over it, and my grandma and my dad left me behind. 

 

I walked out of the hotel, and went back outside, and I found that neither were still in the same spot they were in before when I left to go to the bathroom 🚽.  They just kept walking around the Market without me. I was like, "What the hell!? 😤" so I just decided to go back into the hotel, and wait in the lobby until they called me. And they had to gall to be like, "Where were you!?" and I told them, "You left me behind! You didn't tell me you were going to keep walking, and you didn't tell me where you were going to be. Or at least, you weren't clear about it on the phone 📱 when I called you to ask you where you were. So rather than waste my time, walking around the Market, my right foot starting to hurt, sweating like crazy, trying to find you, I decided to wait in the hotel you until you were finally ready to leave this god forsaken place." So I didn't enjoy myself that much at this year's Santa Fe Indian Market. 

 

We didn't get our money 💵's worth I don't feel like. We would've better off just investing that money 💵 into going to see Mutiny (2026) in theaters. Next year, we're going without my dad for sure. I'll have to tell my grandma about that. But on the plus side of that trip, we did bump into my cousin, his girlfriend, and their son while we were there, eating pizza 🍕 at a local pizza place 🍕 near where the Market was taking place, Upper Crust. Get it? It's a pun, the name of the restaurant is a pun 😁. I mentioned him before in a previous, he's the one that's named Atlas. I think that's a cool name, Atlas. I didn't even think of that one while I was thinking of names for their baby before he was born, but they made a good pick. Seeing them was the real highlight of that day, and that trip. It did make it somewhat worth it. 

 

So, I was hoping that I would at least to get to see Onslaught (2026) since it was the one out of those three that I was the most interested in, for the reasons I stated before, and I figured that it was still September and it came out at the beginning of September, surely it would still playing a couple of weeks. I mean, The End of Oak Street came out in August, it didn't exactly light the world on fire 🔥 except for dinosaur enthusiasts wanting to see a decently budgeted and competently made dinosaur movie that isn't Jurassic World, and it's already out on digital (people are already doing reactions to it on YouTube), and yet it's still playing at least one theater ☝️, the Regal theater inside the Cottonwood Mall in Albuquerque (on the west side), so why wouldn't Onslaught (2026) still be playing? But alas, no dice 🎲. I turned up snake eyes. 

 

I guess the movie did a lot worse at the box office than I had thought for it get pulled from theaters that quickly. The way the film industry works currently, the way theatrical runs for movies work nowadays is that if a movie does well, if it's making money 💵, then they'll keep playing it, months on end if they so will. That's why The Odyssey (2026) and Spider-Man: Brand New Day are still playing, even though they both came out in July. They made a billion dollars 💵 each, of course they're going to keep playing them, even into September. I don't care about either of those movies, clearly there's plenty of other people seeing them, which is why they made as money 💵 as they did. But if a movie isn't doing well, if it isn't making money 💵, they'll pull it from theaters and release it on digital, sometimes the very next week. Then maybe a couple of months later, they'll release it on physical media, DVD 📀, Blu-Ray 💿, and 4K 💿. 

 

That's what happened to Borderlands (2024), and unfortunately, Onslaught (2026) met the same fate 😔. It only grossed $3.3 million 💵 against a $15 million budget 💵, meaning it was pretty much a box office bomb 💣. I don't know why it bombed 💣 so hard, was there just not enough awareness? Was the marketing not far reaching enough? Was there too much competition from other movies that it just got overshadowed? Or were people just not interested in seeing it? Whatever the reason, it's a shame that it did so poorly and it got pulled from theaters before the one guy ♂︎ was interested in seeing it the most (me) got the chance to see it. I hope that it isn't the end for this movie and that it doesn't just get forgotten and does find its audience and it does gain cult following. 

 

It was inspired by the works of John Carpenter (Chris Bombray compared the movie to the work of John Carpenter in his review of it for JoBlo), and many of John Carpenter's movies were box office bombs 💣 when they came out in theaters, before they eventually gained cult followings, often times years later. Even a movie as derided as Ghosts of Mars. So hopefully the same will happen to Onslaught (2026). I also hope the movie's box office failure doesn't hurt Adam Wingard's career too much and he still gets to keep making movies into the foreseeable future, because I like his movies (the ones I've seen), and I like him as a person, he seems like a cool guy ♂︎. Even he does look like Alan Moore now with that beard and that long hair. 

 

So, since we couldn't see Onslaught (2026), me and my grandma decided to still go to the movies, and just go to see another movie. We decided to split up and see different movies. She talked about seeing Practical Magic 2 since that recently came out and she of course liked the first Practical Magic from 1998, and I decided to go see Coyote vs. Acme. Even though I wasn't incredibly enthusiastic about seeing this movie since I was so dead set on seeing Onslaught (2026) and was still reeling from it being pulled from theaters before I got the chance to see it, but I figured that I would go see it since it was the only other movie I was somewhat interested in seeing and it was on my list. I wasn't going to watch Resident Evil (2026), I'm not touching that movie with a ten foot pole. I saw the trailer when I went to go see Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2026) (which was also a box office disappointment), and it looks nothing like Resident Evil, I don't care what anyone else says. 

 

It just looks like a typical 2020s horror movie, no different from the director, Zach Cregger's previous work, Barbarian (2022) and Weapons (2025). Nothing I saw in that trailer really screamed Resident Evil to me, it didn't feel at like Resident Evil, it just looked like a generic horror movie that could've come out at any point during this decade so far. It just seems like he just wanted to the Resident Evil brand for name recognition and as a plant to explore his own ideas. If that's the case, then why just make another original horror film? Why make a Resident Evil movie if you're not actually interested in making a Resident Evil movie, and just wanting a conduit to explore your own ideas? I'm just going to the CGI movies and the miniseries thank you for much, and if I really want a taste of live action Resident Evil, then maybe I'll watch the movies starring Milla Jovovich. I won't say "directed by Paul W.S. Anderson" because he didn't direct all the movies, just a few of them, he directed the first one, the fourth one, the fifth one, and the sixth one. 

 

People complain about those movies being unfaithful to the Resident Evil games, and focusing on an original character and not any of the already established characters from the games, but yet this movie does the same thing and it gets a pass. Just because it's directed by Zach Cregger and Zach Cregger's a hot name right now. Come on! Get out of that bullshit 😠! This is the kind of hypocritical bullshit I hate 🖕😤, it's why I don't like movie discourse right now. People aren't consistent from one movie to the other, they have double standards. Rules for thee, but not for me. That's why I refuse to watch that movie or support it in any way despite me being a huge Resident Evil fan. Besides, I've never been much of a fan of the overly horror focused side of the franchise. 

 

I wasn't a fan of the sharp pivot back to horror with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard ☣️. I've always been more into the actiony part of the franchise, starting with the original Resident Evil 4 from 2005 and ending with Resident Evil 6 (or Umbrella Corps if you want to count that), but still continuing on in the CGI animated stuff. That was my entry point into the franchise. I didn't grew up with the original games, when it was just survival horror. My conception of Resident Evil isn't as a survival horror franchise, but as a third person shooter franchise with some puzzles here and there, and where the enemies are zombies 🧟‍♂️ and other creatures. A lot of the actiony Resident Evil games, and even the CGI animated stuff, do have pretty James Bond or Jack Ryan style plots, Resident Evil 4 and 5 especially play out like Bond movies, with their respective main villains feeling like Bond villains, which is why I think it'll be pretty easy for me to get into James Bond despite not growing up with it a lot of hardcore Bond fans have. 

 

Because I have seen so many things that have been inspired by James Bond over the years, including Godzilla. More than a a few of the Godzilla movies, mainly ones directed by Jun Fukuda, were heavily inspired by James Bond. That's why Ebirah, Horror of the Deep 🦐 has a surf rock 🏄‍♂️ soundtrack and features a track very reminiscent of the Bond theme, the one that's used in the gun barrel at the beginning of all the EON produced Bond movies. That's why the villains in Ebirah, Horror of the Deep 🦐 are a terrorist organization with their own island lair 🏝️ where they're developing nuclear weapons ☢️ using the uranium deposits mined from underneath the island 🏝️. That's why the inside of the M Space Hunter Nebula Aliens 👽's Godzilla Tower base looks so much like a Bond villain lair in Godzilla vs. Gigan. That's why Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) features an Interpol agent character and has gunfights featuring the human and alien characters 👽. Because Jun Fukuda was a huge James Bond fan, and his love for Bond bled into a lot of his work, especially his work in the Godzilla series. He even directed a Bond parody of his own, two of them ✌️ in fact, Ironfinger and Golden Eyes. 

 

My grandma was curious when I told her I wanted to watch Coyote vs. Acme, even though she talked about it with my other grandma (her sister) a couple of weeks ago. She just didn't remember. But my attempts to jog her memory by reminding her of that conversation didn't exactly work, she wasn't receptive to it, and she wanted to watch the trailer anyway. And she saw the trailer, and once she realized that it was a Looney Tunes movie, her interest was peaked, because she grew up with Looney Tunes. She watched all the original Looney Tunes shorts, and recognized a lot of the characters. And she decided to see Coyote vs. Acme with me instead of going to see Practical Magic 2 by herself. Regardless of my own feelings on the movie, I do ultimately think she made the right choice. 

 

Most people probably already know what the story behind Coyote vs. Acme's release, it's the whole reason why people are even going to the theater to watch it because it went viral online, and was a subject of a grassroots online campaign. My grandma doesn't know, she didn't even know this movie existed until a couple of weeks ago, or a couple of days ago since she forgot the conversation in which she first learned about it, and had to be reminded about it the day we saw it in theaters. But for those that don't know, like my grandma, Coyote vs. Acme has a pretty long and storied history and journey to its recent theatrical release in August, that's frankly more interesting than the movie itself. Basically, Coyote vs. Acme is a Looney Tunes movie that is a live action/animated hybrid, similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, or past Looney Tunes movies like Space Jam, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, and more recently, Space Jam: A New Legacy. It's based off of a short story that was published in the New Yorker back in 1990, and it was picked up by James Gunn, the same guy ♂︎ behind the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and the guy ♂︎ who's currently running the DCU (to mixed results, but that's a whole other issue), who decided to adapt it into a screenplay, along with Jeremy Slater and Sammy Burch. Gunn is no stranger to adapting animated properties into live action, since he also wrote the two live action Scooby-Doo movies in the 2000s. 

 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Coyote vs. Acme that I took from one of the trailers.) 

 

 

 

 

 

The story of the movie, and the short story it was based on, is pretty simple: it's about Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Corporation over all the faulty products that he's bought from them over the years, in his vein attempts at trying to catch the Road Runner. It's a premise and a story you can sum up in just one sentence ☝️. But the real story behind this movie, and the why it went viral in the first place, and i seen as a "people's champion," begins when Warner Bros. merged with Discovery back in 2021. Because the newly combined company was in so much debt 💸, the new CEO, David Zaslav, decided to cancel a bunch of film, TV, and even video game projects as a cost saving measure, as well as shelf already finished products, never to see the light of the day. 

 

The animation division of the company took the biggest hit, with so many animated shows being canceled, animated movies in development being canceled, and already finished animated movies being shelved. All so they could be written as a tax write-offs, and David Zaslav could strip the company down and sell it for scraps, which we're seeing the fruits of by this proposed merger with Paramount Skydance. It's becoming evident that he purposefully ran Warner Bros. into the ground that could it be bought, sold, and merged with another company, and he could get even richer from it 🤑. Because all these corporate CEO types are just motivated by greed 🤑 more than anything else. They only care about corporate consolidation because it means that they'll get even richer 🤑 than they already are. It is a feature and not a bug of capitalism, and it's the reason why capitalism only really works (for the people that is) when it's regulated. Coyote vs. Acme just happened to be one of these animated projects that was shelved, along with another Looney Tunes movie, The Day the Earth Blew Up 🌎💥. 

 

When the Internet 🛜 got wind of this, there was a huge uproar, and they demanded that Warner Bros. release the movie immediately, and an Internet campaign 🛜 the likes of which not seen since the Release the Snyder Cut movement quickly emerged to get the film released. Maybe not theatrically, but ideally theatrical. All that mattered to the Coyote vs. Acme supporters was that film got released, whether it was straight-to-streaming, or VOD, or even direct-to-DVD 📀 and Blu-Ray 💿, it didn't matter, as long as it got released and people actually got to see it. Ultimately, Warner Bros. relented, and they shopped the distribution rights around, until they bought by a small independent film distributor called Ketchup Entertainment. The same company that bought the distribution rights to The Day the Earth Blew Up 🌎💥, and the company that distributed Weekend in Taipei in the US 🇺🇸. And it was them who decided to give the movie a theatrical release. 

 

They released both movies in theaters, this movie and The Day the Earth Blew Up 🌎💥, and they released them two years apart, with The Day the Earth Blew Up 🌎💥 being released first in 2024, and this movie second in 2026. To be clear, both movies were made to be released straight-to-streaming, on Warner Bros.'s own streaming platform, HBO Max. So not since Lilo & Stitch (2025) has a streaming project been elevated to theatrical movie status. Of course neither Looney Tunes has made anywhere to close to the amount of money 💵 that Lilo & Stitch (2025) made during its theatrical run, that movie a billion dollars 💵. Much to the chagrin of Lilo & Stitch fans who prefer the original and didn't even want the movie to exist in the first place. 

 

While The Day the Earth Blew Up 🌎💥 was mostly a blip on the radar of most moviegoers, and was largely ignored and forgotten about, with Looney Tunes fans and animation fans in general being the only ones going out of their way to see it in theaters, the release of Coyote vs. Acme was met with much fanfare and hype, especially across social media. It felt like a real theatrical release, with the kind of marketing campaign that a normal theatrical movie put out by a major studio would have. It had a whole Internet campaign 🛜 behind it, of course it was going to have a more hype surrounding it than The Day the Earth Blew Up 🌎💥. But even the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League didn't have this much of a media blitz surrounding it. Probably because it was released straight-to-streaming, and not theatrically like this movie was, and it an alternate cut to an already existing movie rather than a whole movie entirely. 

 

And while Coyote vs. Acme hasn't made an insane amount of money 💵, it was still a lot more successful than people were anticipating. So far, it has grossed $80 million 💵 against a $70–72 million budget 💵, which is more than people were expecting, but not crazy amounts like making $175.5 million 💵 in just one weekend ☝️. It got pretty good reviews from most critics, it has a positive rating on most review aggregate website including Rotten Tomatoes 🍅 (not that I care what Rotten Tomatoes 🍅 has to say, but a lot of other people do), and it has largely been embraced by most of the Internet 🛜 because of its anti-corporate message. While my expectations for this movie weren't astronomically high, I did expect good things. Everything I heard about this movie online was positive, including from at least one reviewer ☝️ I somewhat trust, Jeremy Jahns, who I'm not subscribed to and who I don't watch all the time. 

 

While I didn't grow up with Looney Tunes to the same degree as my grandma, I was aware of the franchise and the branding, and I had seen Looney Tunes stuff in the past, I watched some of the shorts that were available on DVD 📀, mostly the Bugs Bunny 🐰 shorts,  and a couple that were available on YouTube. Including snippets or some of the controversial and banned ones. Mainly the ones that were racist and featured black caricatures. I watched Looney Tunes: Back in Action awhile back, somebody uploaded the whole movie on YouTube in multiple parts. It probably got deleted by now, but that's how I watched it, and I liked it from what I remember, I liked what I saw, even if the Blockbuster Buster gave it a pretty negative review. A negative review that was pretty undeserved, like Eric Rodriguez AKA ERod was was in the minority with that movie it seems like most people like that movie. 

 

People who didn't like either of the Space Jam movies liked Back in Action a lot more, which makes sense since the director, Joe Dante didn't like Space Jam either, and made Back in Action as an attempt to make a "real" Looney Tunes. To show people, this is what Looney Tunes is all about, not that commercialized nonsense that Space Jam was. That movie was literally based off of a commercial, it shouldn't be a surprise that it was so commercialized, like the Space Jam movies (both of them) were an exercise in commercialism, rather than true artistry. Though I'm sure plenty of people who worked them were still pretty passionate about Looney Tunes, especially the animators and the voice actors. 

 

I even watched some episodes of Duck Dodgers, the series adaptation of the Looney Tunes shorts of the same name, which were in of themselves parodies of the Buck Rogers space adventure serials. I even bought the whole series on Blu-Ray 💿 recently a few months ago, and I plan on reviewing the series on this blog in the future. I watched episodes of The Looney Tunes Show on Cartoon Network, the show that re envisioned Looney Tunes as a sitcom, and placed the classic Looney Tunes characters in a traditional sitcom suburban setting and in traditional sitcom plot lines. As well as feature 3D animated Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner shorts and random musical shorts in between each segment. 

 

 

 

 

(This is a picture I took of the Duck Dodgers Complete Series Blu-Ray 💿 as well as one other Blu-Ray 💿 and game that I bought around that time, in May. I took this photo on May 19, 2026, so it was quite awhile ago. The other Blu-Ray 💿 of course is We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️, which I hope to review sometime in October after I finish my Cowboy Bebop (1998) review, and the one game in this line up is the Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 remastered bundle pack that was released last year before The Super Mario Galaxy Movie came out.) 

 

 

 

 

 

So, it wasn't as if I hated Looney Tunes or had no awareness of it prior to watching the movie, quite the opposite in fact. I have a love and appreciation for Looney Tunes, even if I don't know every single Looney Tunes character there is to know, and even if I don't have the same nostalgia for it as my grandparents did. You really can't go wrong with the classics. There's a reason why Looney Tunes has endured for this long, and has been reinterpreted and reimagined so many times. I do have a lot of respect for older cartoons, even ones dating back to the 1960s, like Speed Racer or Jonny Quest, and I even plan on reviewing some of them, although Speed Racer was an anime that originated from Japan 🇯🇵 and the term "cartoon" is mostly reserved for western animated movies and shows. Even if some of the elements within these older cartoons haven't aged the best. And believe me, a lot of it hasn't 😬. 

 

I was intrigued by the premise. It interested me, it seemed like a fresh and dare I say original take on Looney Tunes that hadn't been attempted on screen before, and it just made sense. Like of course Wile E. Coyote would sue Acme for selling him faulty products and playing a huge role in his failed attempts to catch the Road Runner. Plus, it was shot in New Mexico, and I'm always intrigued whenever I hear about a movie or show that's shot in New Mexico and isn't a western 🤠, and I do like being able to notice locations in the background that I've been to throughout the years, and pass by on a near regular basis. It's why I'm interested in checking out Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, which Jeremy Jahns compared the movie to. Mostly because it's a court room comedy set in New Mexico and the main human characters are lawyers. 

 

Even though Better Call Saul obviously isn't a comedy of course. It's got funny moments, moments of levity, how could it not? It starts a comedian in the lead role. But it's not a comedy. It's a court room crime drama thriller. In between all the court room and lawyer stuff in that show, there are moments of crime drama thriller action, when we take a break from the characters at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill (HHM), to focus on the Salamanca crime family, as well as Gus Fring and Mike Ehrmantraut. Onslaught (2026) was also shot in New Mexico, and is set here, so that's another point towards that, Just saying 👐. On paper, it has everything that I like and look for in a movie, or at least makes me interested in a movie. All of the ingredients for a good movie were there, I should have liked this movie. And yet, I didn't 😕. 

 

I walked out of the theater, not really sure what I actually thought of the movie, and even two days out from seeing it, and having time to process it, I'm still not entirely sure what I felt about it. I don't know, I just didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to, I wanted to like this movie, I was rooting for it to get a release, and I heard all these great things about it in the weeks before I saw it. But for whatever reason, it just didn't click with me the way that it did other people. The jokes didn't even land with me, I didn't even laugh once in this entire movie, and there were I wanted to laugh at something that other people in the theater were laughing at, including my grandma, I just couldn't bring myself to laugh at it. It just wasn't that funny to me. I am genuinely jealous of all the people, both on the Internet 🛜 and in real life, who were able to get something out of it and enjoy it, including my grandma. 

 

I feel like my grandma liked it more than I did, but that's more so because of the nostalgia she felt like watching it. Being able to recognize nearly all the Looney Tunes characters on screen. They didn't just stick with the most popular Looney Tunes characters (the heavy hitters), they included a lot of obscure Looney Tunes characters and Looney Tunes characters who hadn't been seen on screen in decades that most people probably wouldn't even recognize unless they grew up with the old school Looney Tunes shorts or if they were a more modern day hardcore Looney Tunes fan, You know, deep cuts. Even though I didn't much care for this film, and it was pretty overhyped, that it is something to be appreciated about it. 

 

I am still ultimately glad that the movie got released, and people got to it see it, even I didn't really care for it myself. And I still got a kick out of seeing all the different New Mexico locations throughout the film, me and my grandma, that is something we both equally enjoyed about the movie, and I liked the little detail that the train 🚊 that hits Wile E. Coyote at the beginning of the movie is a Rail Runner, which is also passenger train 🚊 in New Mexico. It runs through Albuquerque all the way to Santa Fe. My cousin used to ride those back home from Santa Fe to Albuquerque to be picked up by his parents, or by our grandparents, when he still Santa Fe Indian School, which is preparatory school for Native American students. I never the privilege of going to Santa Fe Indian School, I got stuck going to Laguna-Acoma High School (better known as LA), but plenty of other people in my family have gone there. My grandma and I have talked taking a ride on one of those, but we so far haven't gotten the opportunity, because something always come up and never get the chance to ride the Rail Runner. And even when we do have free time, we never have the money 💵 to do so.

 

But if we do ever go, we talked about going on Wednesdays since there's a senior discount, or it's free for seniors, on that day. So my grandma would be able to ride it for free, while she only has to pay for me, as an adult. It's not just a clever joke because the name of the train 🚊 is the Rail Runner, just like the Road Runner, but it's also a cool way of showing something unique to New Mexico. If you ever go out this way, be sure to ride the Rail Runner. At least once ☝️. If you don't check out the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, you could at least ride the Rail Runner, which also starts in Albuquerque. Whenever it comes to movies or TV shows being shot in New Mexico, there's always a toss between whether it's actually set in New Mexico, or if it's just filmed in New Mexico and it's supposed to be somewhere else. Most westerns 🤠, most modern westerns 🤠, just film in New Mexico and pretend it's Utah, or Nevada, or even Arizona. This movie's not a western 🤠, but the 2023 Wes Anderson movie, Asteroid City ☄️ was shot in New Mexico, and yet, the titular town it takes place in supposed to be in Arizona. What the hell? 

 

Might as well have shot the movie in Arizona, or just have the town actually be in New Mexico if you're going to shot the whole thing in New Mexico. This is another reason why Wes Anderson sucks and why I hate him 😡. The only good thing about his movies are their soundtracks, that's it, which is the only good thing about Quentin Tarantino's movies too. They have that in common. The Michael Bay Transformers movies also did this (particularly the first two ✌️) where they shot in New Mexico, particularly Albuquerque, Alamogordo, and White Sands Missile Range, but they weren't actually set in those places. Those locations doubled for Los Angeles, Mission City, some random village in Qatar 🇶🇦, and some random village in Egypt 🇪🇬.  

 

Terminator Salvation also did the same, they shot a good chunk of it, if not the whole thing in New Mexico, in different parts of the state, including Taos, which isn't a common location that's used even in movies and shows set in New Mexico. But that movie doesn't actually take place in New Mexico, it's set in the post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, and places around Los Angeles. They choose to shoot it there because it cheaper to film there, and there were better tax incentives, than filming in Los Angeles and the rest of California. Terminator Salvation had a big budget ($200 million 💵 to be exact), but they wanted to save some of that money 💵 for big stars like Christian Bale, and for the special effects. The movie made extensive use of both practical and CGI effects, and those required a pretty penny to put into practice, especially back then 2008-2009, when that movie was in production. 

 

But to this movie's credit, it does actually take place in New Mexico, it is actually set in Albuquerque. Obviously, part of the reason why it's set in Albuquerque is because of the Looney Tunes connection, because Bugs Bunny 🐰 said he took a wrong turn left there in one of the classic shorts, but also because it's a gorgeous yet economical location to set the movie, for all the production's needs. It's certainly cheaper shooting in Albuquerque than in Los Angeles, it's why Vince Gillian decided to film Breaking Bad and all related series and movies in New Mexico and set them in New Mexico because it way cheaper filming there than it was in Los Angeles or California as a whole. But I also the movie being set in New Mexico did have something to do with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Even this movie is an adaptation of a short story published in the New Yorker in the 1990s, I do this movie was somewhat influenced by Better Call Saul, it's kind of hard to deny the influences. And the movie being set in New Mexico, particularly Albuquerque, was one of those influences. 

 

The animation style didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. I'm generally not a fan of that cel shaded CGI animation art style, where they try to make 3D animation look like 2D animation. It's something that it becoming a lot more and more common now and I really don't like it. While the animated characters are definitely all CGI, especially in all the scenes where they're in live action environments and are interacting with the live action actors, they try too hard to hide the fact that this is 3D animation. Yes, the characters are cel shaded, but not to same degree as in movies like the animated Spider-Verse movies (say "animated" because there is now one Spider-Verse streaming series that is in live action, Spider-Noir), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 🥷🐢, KPop Demon Hunters 🇰🇷, and Goat 🐐 (2026). Like, they do still make it clear that it is still 3D animated. The cel shading honestly makes them all look like video game characters. 

 

But I also liked the few moments in here that were genuinely 2D animated, there were pretty well animated. I'm also glad that even though is mainly a story from Wile E. Coyote's perspective, and we're supposed to sympathize with him, they didn't go and try to vilify the Road Runner. The Road Runner is pretty innocent here, and is not at all responsible for Wile E. Coyote's misfortune. In fact, by the end, they kind of reveal that Road Runner actually likes Wile E. Coyote, and sort of views him as a friend, despite everything, and likes the chase. He sort of views it as a game, and sees it as playing with his best friend. His only best friend it seems. When everything's stripped away, all Wile and the Road Runner have is each other, and they come to that realization. Which is why they begin chasing each other again. 

 

If only James Gunn had that same impulse when he wrote the live action Scooby-Doo movies, and didn't feel the need to vilify Scrappy-Doo, further tarnishing the character's reputation, and ensuring that this character cannot appear in anything without him vilified and/or humiliated.  Even though Scrappy-Doo played a huge role in letting the Scooby-Doo franchise continue on into the 21st century 😒. And I like that they didn't try to soften Wile's edges in order to make him sympathetic, since there's whole liar reveal story where Will Forte's character, Kevin Avery (who's last name is a reference to Tex Avery, one of the key animators on the original Looney Tunes theatrical shorts) learns that Wile's lawsuit against Acme was all just a ruse, and just apart of a larger scheme to catch the Road Runner, so he can kill him and eat him. Wile of course sees the error of his ways, especially after the Road Runner testifies in his favor in front of Congress, and he uses his elaborate trap to humiliate Foghorn Leghorn and the Acme legal team led by John Cena's character, Buddy Crane. Also, is this is the third time that John Cena has been in a project associated with James Gunn, after The Suicide Squad (2021) and Peacemaker 🕊️, I wonder if he vouched for him to get this role since he also co-produced the movie as well as co-write it. 

 

Maybe I'll like this movie more the second time, if I ever get the chance to watch it again, if someone in my family is watching and I decide to join in and watch it with them, or if I decide to watch it again of my own volition. I am open to having my mind changed about this movie because I did want to like it. I was rooting for it, and I'm glad it got released. I really wanted to join in on the hype with this one, and singing its praises along with the rest of the Internet 🛜, but I just couldn't, I just didn't like it that much. It was kind of a disappointment for me. But maybe watching it again, knowing what to expect, and not feeling bad that I missed out on another movie I wanted to see, I'll have a better time with it. And if I still don't like it watching it the second time, then that's it. I just don't like the movie, and I'll just leave it at that. I do still plan on watching The Day the Earth Blew Up 🌎💥 in the future, and when I do get around to watching it, you can be sure that there will be a review of it on the blog. It's on my list after all. I might even like it more than Coyote vs. Acme, I won't know until I actually watch it. And if I don't end up liking that movie either, then that's it. I just don't like either of these two recent Looney Tunes movies, and I'll just leave it at that.