Woody Woodpecker (2017)

Woody Woodpecker is the titular main protagonist of the critically panned 2017 film of the same name. Sadly, his character was badly butchered.

Why He Sucks
(NOTE: This will focus exclusively on the 2017 live-action film)


 * 1) He was flanderized from being a comedic slapstick animal into an unlikable sadist who annoys and tortures Lance and his family and makes everyone's life a living hell.
 * 2) * Woody may have been a mischievous screwball prankster in the original cartoons (especially in the earlier 1940s cartoons), but not to this extent of being malicious and sadistic, making this out of character for him.
 * 3) He wasted the talents of Eric Bauza, who voiced characters like Stimpy, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, The Banana Splits, and a few others, but unlike those characters, Eric does not do a good job voicing Woody. Sorry, Eric, you're usually a good voice actor, but you don't do very well as Woody.
 * 4) He shows no remorse at all for making Vanessa and Lance break up. But then again, Vanessa was no better.
 * 5) He provides too much toilet humor as he farts out his signature laugh, poops on a guy's chocolate ice cream and the guy eats it (which, when he does, Woody is disgusted), and poops on Lance's girlfriend.
 * 6) Most of the injuries that he conflicts on Lance and Vanessa in the film are more lifelike and hurtful rather than being cartoonish and funny, most notably the scene where he gets both of them covered in wet cement and getting their caravan house burned down, the latter being the reason why Vanessa decided to break up with Lance (see WIS #4).
 * 7) He even strips two underage boys to their underwear and threatens to go further with his infamous line "Get ready to go commando!". This could be viewed as pedophilic.
 * 8) Because of his actions as described above, he comes off more like the main antagonist rather than the main protagonist of the film. Not helping is the fact that despite being called Woody Woodpecker, the first half of the movie focuses on Lance and his son.
 * 9) He never got any comeuppance for his actions.
 * 10) The only reason why he stops abusing Lance and his family in this film is because they keep bribing him with his favorite peanut butter biscuit, which can convey a bad lesson about family and the environment and automatically cancels the film's lesson about tree felling.
 * 11) He is basically a bad combination of both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck from Looney Tunes and Jerry from Tom and Jerry, but if you take away everything likable about both Bugs, Daffy and Jerry, you get this version of Woody in a nutshell.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) He got better later on, even trying to help rebuild, only because they keep bribing him with peanut butter biscuits (see WIS #9).
 * 2) To be fair, he didn't purposely cause the house to burn down.
 * 3) His design is still cute, and it closely resembles his modern character design from the early-1950s Walter Lantz cartoons.
 * 4) He is much more likable in all the other incarnations of the franchise, including the earlier 1990s version.
 * 5) He redeems himself in the later 2018 version.