COYOTE V. ACME

since WB doesn't seem interested in releasing it.
don't ask where I got this from.
copy and share it while you can. repost it wherever you like.

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The movie is set in a Roger Rabbit type world where humans and cartoon characters live together. All animated characters are rotoscoped over the live-action footage in 2D, Roger Rabbit/Back in Action style. Wile E. Coyote is silent the entire movie, communicating only in gestures or with signs.

The movie starts with a flashback to 1985. A cartoon Peter Lorre (and it is specifically Peter Lorre) interferes with an Acme assembly line and gets thrown into a portable hole.

Flash forward to the present day. Wile E. Coyote tries one of his usual plans to catch the Road Runner, and predictably fails. He returns dejected to his cave, where he sees a TV ad for a local law firm promising compensation. Inspired, he catches a bus to Albuquerque.

Here we meet our real protagonist - Kevin Avery (Will Forte) of the "Avery, Jones and Maltese" law firm (get it). Once an ambitious go-getter, Avery has taken the easy path in his career, always taking small cases and settling out of court for small sums, and living in a run-down motel. He meets Wile, who puts forward his case, intending to sue Acme Corporation for damages. In this setting, Acme Corporation is one of the world's largest conglomerates, implied to be the parent company for several real-world corporations. (Doritos are specificially named in the screenplay as an Acme product in-universe)
Avery thinks it's just gonna be a small one-and-done settlement like usual, but Wile secretly submits hundreds of complaints spanning his entire "career" with the help of Paige Avery, Kevin's young optimistic niece interning at the firm, who idolises Avery and dreams of becoming a lawyer herself.

The legal complaints get submitted to Buddy Crane, head lawyer for Acme and an old acquaintance of Avery. (John Cena) They meet up and Buddy slips Avery a check for $50,000 to drop the case, but Wile destroys it, intending to push it all the way. Buddy threatens Avery that he's going to do everything in his power to destroy him and his case. Avery, inexperienced in actual court trials, desperately wants to drop the case, but the firm informs him that Acme's extortionate legal fees will bankrupt them regardless of whether they proceed or not, and decide to move forward, expecting to lose horribly either way.

The trial begins with a no-nonsense judge who has no patience for any of Wile's cartoon antics. They humiliate themselves trying to demonstrate the faulty nature of Acme's products, and the case seems decided against them already. Wile stays with Avery in his motel, constructing implements for some kind of secret plan of his own. Both Avery's firm and Acme attempt to find the Road Runner and get them as a witness, but are unable to make contact.

At Acme HQ we meet the head of Acme's Animated Products Department - Foghorn Leghorn, who instructs Buddy to get the case wrapped up ASAP before "something" is made public. At the motel, Avery gets a call from an Acme whistleblower (the voice of Bugs Bunny) who leads him, Wile and Paige to an asylum of some kind where they find Daffy Duck. Avery asks Daffy about Acme, causing him to have some kind of mental breakdown. He secretly hands Avery a box, and seemingly warns him about something before being lead away by nurses. As they leave, Avery finds the message "That's All, Folks" painted on his car windscreen before it suddenly gets smashed by a large boulder. Someone wants to cover this up.

After fleeing for their lives, they inspect the box and find a strange cartoon paint can inside, which Wile uses to paint a tunnel on the wall, which they enter. Inside the tunnel, they find an image of a man pushing a boulder up a hill and a secret message to Daffy mentioning something called "Project Sisyphus", but are forced to flee an oncoming train before they can read further. The Acme operative spying on them is revealed to be an older, bitter Tweety, who reports to someone that they know about Project Sisyphus.

Paige sees this as a potential huge break in the case, but Avery tells her to temper her expectations. They argue and Paige tells Avery that she used to look up to him, but after seeing how he works, doesn't believe in him any more. He realises she's right. Avery takes a drive with Wile and tells him about his backstory, why he wanted to be a lawyer, why he lost his enthusiasm, etc etc. Avery went to a top legal school with Buddy. Once he passed the bar and became a lawyer for real, he couldn't win any cases despite being top of his class, and grew jaded about his own skill. Wile takes the car to a canyon edge and makes a show of trying to jump off the cliff to the other side, failing every time, but keeping at it. Avery realises Wile's point - never give up, no matter how impossible it seems.

They return to the motel room, and Avery catches a glimpse of Wile's real plan - the entire legal suit is all just a ploy to get the Road Runner on the witness stand so Wile can catch him.

Paige looks into Project Sisyphus and finds a lead connecting it to "Dr. Lorre", as well as an address connected to him. Avery and Paige head there, where they meet Granny - the old woman from the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons. She tells them that she was married to Dr. Lorre long ago. He worked at Acme helping develop their Animated Products line, but became dissatisfied with the work before suddenly disappearing in 1985. Granny tells them that she's recently been recieving messages from an unknown caller, and plays back a voicemail - Bugs Bunny. Avery recognises the voice and Granny leaves them the tape. They are secretly photographed leaving the house by Acme.

At the Acme legal offices, Foghorn Leghorn tells Buddy that Avery knows too much, and that he is sending in the "big guns" after him. An offscreen assassin throws a bomb through Paige's window, but she survives the attempt. Playing back the Bugs Bunny tape, Wile hears something in the background, and filters the sound to uncover a music track playing in the background, which Avery traces to the Albuquerque Annual Carrot Festival.

Heading to the carrot festival grounds, they encounter a shadowy figure. He speaks in the Bugs Bunny voice, but it's not actually Bugs - it's Dr. Lorre, still alive and speaking through a voice filter. Lorre explains the background of Project Sisyphus. In the 1980s, Foghorn Leghorn was brought into the Acme Animated Products department and made numerous changes, beginning dangerous, painful tests on the cartoons. Cartoon characters and objects obey their own comical laws of physics, and Project Sisyphus was an initiative of studying/harnessing cartoon physics in order to improve Acme's human-side products - at the expense of the cartoons, knowingly putting dangerous and faulty products on the market in order to secretly study the results. Wile is on Acme's record as a "high-usage user" - every single one of his failures has been by design.

After discovering the truth about Project Sisyphus, Dr. Lorre was captured and imprisoned in a portable hole, which Acme covered up with a story about him eloping with his secretary. Decades later, he managed to escape by sheer luck, and is now in hiding on the outside. Before Dr. Lorre can tell them anything else, cars pull up, forcing Avery's crew to run.

The next day in court, Avery asks the witness, Acme's head of PR, about Project Sisyphus. She panics and Buddy secretly has her ejected out of the courtroom. Infuriated by the cartoon antics, the judge declares a mistrial, and the case is dismissed. Avery, undeterred, gives a passionate speech outside the courtroom to the press, publicly denouncing Acme and Project Sisyphus.

When Avery returns to his motel, a huge commotion is outside. Avery finds from Paige that his speech has become a news sensation, and that the case has been escalated to a Congressional inquiry, with Foghorn Leghorn due to testify. Wile E. Coyote wants to go back to his cave home, but Avery convinces him to stick with him and come to the Congress hearing, lying that the Road Runner will testify to get him to come.

In their DC hotel room, Wile finds out that Avery was lying about the Road Runner testifying, and they get into a huge argument. Avery calls him out for using the case as a plan to catch the Road Runner, telling him he'll never succeed in catching him. Hurt, Wile storms out. Avery's partners call to tell him that the firm is officially bankrupt. Avery realises that Wile is gone, and goes after him after finding a note in his plans showing that Wile had come to consider him a friend.

Wile roams the streets of DC and gets lead into a trap by Tweety, leading to a whole comic chase action sequence involving anvils, magnets, etc. Avery catches up to Wile, trying to apologise, but Wile doesn't want to hear it. Tweety tells them about how he was abandoned by Dr. Lorre before Acme took him in, and Avery reveals to him that it's not true - Dr. Lorre was kidnapped by Acme.

Realising that Acme has been lying to him, Tweety pauses, giving them time to escape, but Avery crashes into roadworks and gets knocked out. When he wakes up, Wile is gone. Wile angrily tries to hitch a ride back to the desert, but sees Acme logos and products everywhere and realises that he can't give up now.

Avery arrives at the Congressional hearing alone and in rough shape. Congressman Elmer Fudd, leader of the proceedings (yes, really) tries to dismiss the hearings due to Wile's absence, but Avery interrupts, giving another impassioned speech about Wile's tenacity, and how his refusal to give up and never stop hunting the Road Runner no matter what setbacks come his way has inspired him to turn his own life around. Wile, who has secretly entered the room, hears the whole speech, and quietly takes his seat next to Avery.

Recess is called. Buddy approaches Avery in the bathroom and compliments his speech. He gives him one last chance to drop the case, handing him a million-dollar check - which Avery rips up, now intending to see this through to the end, win or lose.

After the recess, Avery cross-examines Foghorn Leghorn, asking him about Project Sisyphus and accusing him of knowingly releasing dangerous/faulty products and deliberately causing pain to millions of cartoons. Foghorn Leghorn rebukes him in a bitter speech, saying that Acme's technological developments and progress have all been for the greater good even if people got hurt, that cartoons are immortal anyway so it doesn't really matter if they get hurt because it's funny, who even cares about Wile E. Coyote anyway, etc etc.

Avery brings out a surprise witness to prove that someone does care about Wile - the Road Runner. Road Runner testifies that he has witnessed Wile's Acme-related injuries and suffering, and shows that he sees Wile as a friend, asking "Are you coming back?" - the Road Runner really does care about Wile and enjoys the chase in his own way. Wile, finally presented with the opportunity to catch the Road Runner, chooses not to, moved by his friendship.

Despite the testimony, Congress dismisses the case - Avery is finished. Buddy and Foghorn gleefully rub in their victory, and Wile springs his trap, setting off an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine that traps Foghorn in a birdcage - not a real victory, but a bittersweet parting shot.

Avery returns to the law firm, expecting his career to be over, but finds the office swarmed with a huge crowd of cartoons who all wish to press charges of their own against Acme, inspired by the news coverage of Wile's case. A tip-off from Dr. Lorre leads Avery to a cache of video tapes from Project Sisyphus, showing proof of wilful negligence by Acme going back years. Dr. Lorre returns home to an emotional reunion with Granny, while Tweety secretly watches remorsefully.

We skip forward a few months. Avery's law firm (with Paige now a full-time member of the team) is far from bankrupt, now bigger and better than ever, having become renowned for taking on Acme and other corporations in several cases, with federal charges against Acme expected to follow. Avery is happy, filled with a renewed sense of purpose. Wile returns to the desert, having a friendly reunion with the Road Runner before the chase begins once again.

The movie ends with "where are they now" cards explaining that Foghorn and Buddy are ultimately sentenced and imprisoned in a low-security prison, spending most of their time playing golf. Marvin the Martian takes Foghorn's position as head of the Animated Products department.

Wile E. Coyote continues to chase the Road Runner, but has never caught him yet... but maybe someday, he finally will.
Maybe tomorrow.

Fade out.