Of course I’ll see the film because a) Looney Toons and b) screw accountants who bury creativity for a tax write-off.

But I do have a fear: Have we turned another eternal bad guy into a hero?

I could go on for pages about my theory that Wicked is to blame for Donald Trump. But in short, it’s this: The Wicked Witch was the embodiment of evil when we grew up. She had zero redeeming qualities. Then along comes Wicked and tells kids: Hey, you know, you didn’t know the whole story. She’s as good as the Good Witch. You were deceived by fake news.

Then along comes Trump, who says I’m a good guy. Fake news told you I’m bad. And why wouldn’t kids raised on Wicked believe that?

So I worry about turning Wile E Coyote into a good guy/every man. He was just a misunderstood, hard-working every man who got screwed by the system.

I find that dangerous … A la Wicked It’s seared in my brain for a specific reason. Two couples went to see Wicked. At the end of the first act, I said: Yeah, and Hitler was just a misunderstood house painter. And one of my friends says: Stop with the Hitler stuff. Let’s go get a drink. So the four of us went to wherever we could in the theater. As we’re drinking, I open the Playbill and there’s him talking about alt-Hitler. I show it to my friend and he just rolls his eyes.

But I really am serious about this. You can match up the arrival of Wicked the play (it opened in San Francisco and New York in 2003) with this weird undercurrent in American society that says bad is good and good is bad. Couple of generation of kids have now grown up with Wicked the play and now the movie. It’s corroded their thinking and made it possible for grifters like Trump to play them.

Not having seen Coyote v Acme yet, I can’t say. But from the trailers and such, Wile’s been repositioned as the put-upon everyman corrupted by Big Whatever-Acme-Represents.

I mean, think about it. How many unquestioned evildoers are there: The Wicked Witch. Wile E. Coyote. Snidely Whiplash. And, I guess, Darth Vader. Next thing you know, we’ll find out Snidely Whiplash was just a good guy corrupted by the Big Mustache Wax or something…

And, in the end, it all leads to Trump … and MAGA claiming the real oppressed people are mediocre white men…

I’m not for a moment suggesting a conspiracy or anything. I get the creative impulse to reimagine foundational tales. 

But if we keep turning the truly evil characters in our modern mythology into heroes, woe is us…