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NO WONDER ‘COYOTE VS. ACME’ IS RESONATING. IT’S ABOUT RUNAWAY
CORPORATE POWER  
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John Powers
September 4, 2026
NPR
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_ Product unreliability inspired a witty 1990 New Yorker piece by Ian
Frazier, "Coyote v. Acme," in which Wile E. Coyote sues Acme for
damages. In turn, that piece inspired the terrifically entertaining
new movie Coyote vs. Acme, finally in theaters. _

Paige (Lana Condor) and Kevin Avery (Will Forte) represent Wile E. in
his Coyote vs. Acme lawsuit., Warner Brothers

 

Heard on Fresh Air
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Like most of you, I grew up watching cartoons. For me, the best —
and purest — series was always the Road Runner. Its true hero is
not, of course, that smug, beep-beeping bird. It's his perpetually
thwarted pursuer Wile E. Coyote, who, alone in the most stripped-down
of deserts, endures the endless futility of a Beckett character. (In
fact, the character was created at the same time as _Waiting for
Godot_.)

Scheming yet inept, Wile E.'s so hellbent on catching the Road Runner
that he keeps buying shoddy contraptions — rocket skates,
self-guiding bombs, earthquake pills — from a corporation called
Acme. Their misfires inevitably blow him up, clobber him with anvils
or send him plummeting off a cliff.

The unreliability of these products inspired a witty 1990 _New Yorker_
piece
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by Ian Frazier
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"Coyote v. Acme," in which Wile E. Coyote sues Acme for damages. In
turn, that piece inspired the terrifically entertaining new movie
_Coyote vs. Acme_, which has finally turned up in theaters after
Warner Bros., in a controversial, Acme-esque move, tried to shelve the
finished film
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in order to claim a tax write-off.

Blending live action with animation, _Coyote vs. Acme_ takes Frazier's
piece and transforms it into a spoofing riff on the classic legal
thriller — think _The Verdic_t or _Erin Brockovich_ — but one
steeped in the surreal anarchy of Looney Tunes.

The story begins when the fed-up Wile E. decides to take legal action
and hires an Albuquerque lawyer, Kevin Avery, played by Will Forte
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Alas, the scruffy Avery proves to be a hangdog soul who fears failure
so much that he only takes on small cases and settles them for a
pittance.

Luckily, Avery's intern, Paige (Lana Condor), is an idealist. She
pushes him into filing a massive suit against Acme, the world's most
powerful company. Acme's run by the strutting toon Foghorn Leghorn and
represented by killer lawyer Buddy Crane (that's John Cena
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whose body seems to be bursting from his suit.

Soon, Avery, Paige and Wile E. go out looking for evidence and
encounter numerous other Warner Bros. toons: Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird,
pantsless Porky Pig, and, of course, the incomparable Bugs. Along the
way, Team Coyote unearths a sinister Acme project named after
Sisyphus, the mythic stone-pusher whose story anticipates the coyote's
own futility. Over and over, Avery wants to throw in the towel. Of
course, one of the pleasures of Warner Bros. cartoons was their
imaginative delight in shattering the laws of nature, often violently.
Wile E. Coyote can get smooshed by a steamroller, pick himself up,
dust himself off and inflate himself back to normal size. _Coyote vs.
Acme_ serves up a slew of delirious gags like this, several of them
terrific, in which the flesh and blood characters face the same crazy
universe as the toons.

Still, what works in a six-minute cartoon is exhausting in a feature
film, which is why writer Samy Burch and director Dave Green do
something the old Road Runner cartoons never did: They give their
story a plot and a meaning and even some feeling.

We watch Avery develop a spine. We see Wile E.'s wistful longing
beneath his Ahab-like obsession with the Road Runner. And we recognize
the existential bond between the coyote and the roadrunner, the chaser
and chasee, whose lives depend for their meaning on the presence of
the other.

And needless to say, _Coyote vs. Acme_ delivers a message about
runaway corporate power, which may explain why viewers are enjoying it
so much. Acme is the very archetype of today's mega-corporations that
outsource jobs to cheaper countries, manufacture goods designed to
last only until their warranties lapse, force you to wait on hold to
talk to an AI bot and find it cost-efficient to pay off occasional
lawsuits like Wile E.'s rather than change corporate practices. When
the movie suggests that the courts and the Congress bow down to Acme's
power, it's just saying what everybody knows.

Now, what was always great about old Warner Bros. cartoons was their
gleeful irresponsibility. They were never sentimental or improving
like Disney. And in this respect, anyway, _Coyote vs. Acme_ violates
the tradition. The movie celebrates Wile E. Coyote's willingness to
fight on, even in the face of constant failure. I don't know about
you, but I have to love any movie that's clever enough to turn Wile E.
Coyote into a role model. 

_NPR DOES NOT OFFER OR ACCEPT MONEY FOR COVERAGE OR
INTERVIEWS.__Anyone who makes such an offer or request is not an NPR
employee and does not represent NPR._

_JOHN POWERS is the pop culture and critic-at-large on NPR's Fresh Air
with Terry Gross. He previously served for six years as the film
critic._

_Powers spent the last 25 years as a critic and columnist, first for
LA Weekly, then Vogue. His work has appeared in numerous publications,
including Harper's BAZAAR, The Nation, Gourmet, The Washington Post,
and The New York Times._

_A former professor at Georgetown University, Powers is the author of
Sore Winners, a study of American culture during President George W.
Bush's administration. His latest book, WKW: The Cinema of Wong Kar
Wai (co-written with Wong Kar Wai), is an April 2016 release by
Rizzoli._

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