[Notes] Peter Rabbit’s Character Design and Development (Part 4)

Peter Rab­bit series ani­ma­tion sto­ry scene

Con­tin­ued from the pre­vi­ous chap­ter:Peter Rab­bit’s Char­ac­ter Design and Devel­op­ment (Part 3)

The rab­bit part­ner who was reborn in the new sto­ry

In 2012, Peter Rab­bit cel­e­brat­ed its 110th anniver­sary. At the invi­ta­tion of the Vaugh­an Com­pa­ny, Emma Thomp­son, a promi­nent fig­ure in British film and tele­vi­sion, pub­lished her new book, The New Tales of Peter Rab­bit (illus­trat­ed by Eleanor Tay­lor). I’m most impressed by Emma Thomp­son in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty, in which she starred (as the eldest sis­ter) and also wrote the screen­play. Of course, she also played Pro­fes­sor Trelawney, the prophet in the Har­ry Pot­ter films.

How­ev­er, it’s dif­fi­cult to write a sequel to such a beloved work with­out being crit­i­cized. It def­i­nite­ly takes courage. Emma actu­al­ly wrote the three Peter Rab­bit sto­ries in one go — Peter Rab­bit’s New Tales, Peter Rab­bit’s Christ­mas Sto­ry, and Peter Rab­bit’s Adven­tures in the Gar­den — which is tru­ly com­mend­able.

If you only read the first of these three new sto­ries, you might think it’s too much of a copy­cat. Peter Rab­bit, unwill­ing to be lone­ly, ven­tures into the gar­den again and unex­pect­ed­ly sneaks into Mr. and Mrs. McG­o­na­gal­l’s pic­nic bas­ket (rem­i­nis­cent of Tim­my Willie, the coun­try mouse in “The Tale of John­ny the City Mouse”). Then, Mrs. McG­o­na­gall dis­cov­ers him on the way and yells “Catch the thief” (a throw­back to “The Tale of Peter Rab­bit”). Then, while run­ning, he acci­den­tal­ly strays into the ter­ri­to­ry of his Scot­tish rab­bit rel­a­tives… Emma Rab­bit strives to strict­ly main­tain the famil­iar image of Peter Rab­bit while also telling a fresh and orig­i­nal sto­ry. To be fair, the sto­ry is quite suc­cess­ful, and the illus­tra­tions are excel­lent, but it’s just not easy to res­onate with. Nev­er­the­less, for Peter Rab­bit fans, it’s quite enjoy­able to see this “dare­dev­il and clever” char­ac­ter do some­thing “big” again, while still retain­ing his sin­cer­i­ty and hon­esty.

The sec­ond book, “Peter Rab­bit’s Christ­mas Tale,” is an absolute stroke of genius, like­ly inspired by Emma’s exten­sive explo­ration of the Lake Dis­trict, where a turkey at Yew Tree Farm (the actu­al film­ing loca­tion for Hill­top Farm in the film “Miss Pot­ter”) sparked her inspi­ra­tion. William the turkey is a com­plete­ly new char­ac­ter, giv­ing Emma com­plete free­dom in telling his sto­ry. The ace duo of Peter Rab­bit and lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit is a per­fect match for the sto­ry, cre­at­ing a spark that eas­i­ly flows. Peter leads the Christ­mas res­cue, while Ben­jamin acts as the strate­gic advi­sor. This time, Emma clev­er­ly avoids over­ly explic­it char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the two rab­bits, allow­ing them to nat­u­ral­ly blend into the sto­ry. In oth­er words, she allows the rab­bit duo to devel­op inde­pen­dent­ly with­in the sto­ry, allow­ing read­ers to cre­ate their own per­son­al­i­ties. Obvi­ous­ly, each read­er’s ver­sion of Peter Rab­bit and lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit will have sub­tle dif­fer­ences, so let the read­er decide for them­selves.

The third book, “Peter Rab­bit’s Adven­tures in the Gar­den,” is a sat­is­fy­ing finale. The vil­lage has an amuse­ment park, and how could Peter Rab­bit and lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit not be tempt­ed? But his moth­er assigns him a dif­fer­ent task, specif­i­cal­ly “no going to the amuse­ment park.” Bored, Peter Rab­bit sud­den­ly has an idea: why not go through the vil­lage to his cousin Lupin’s house? They’re “not going to the amuse­ment park, just pass­ing through it”—a con­cept that per­fect­ly fits Peter Rab­bit’s mind­set! So they “pass through the amuse­ment park,” and nat­u­ral­ly, there’s bound to be some adven­tures. Emma per­fect­ly cap­tures Peter Rab­bit’s love of adven­ture, and she always keeps his part­ner, lit­tle Ben­jamin, by his side, cre­at­ing a mag­i­cal­ly com­ple­men­tary rela­tion­ship, akin to the say­ing, “Beng is insep­a­ra­ble from Jiao, and Jiao is insep­a­ra­ble from Meng.”

In fact, the real secret is that Peter Rab­bit and lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit, tak­en togeth­er, embody the com­plete “Peter Rab­bit spir­it.” It embod­ies both fear­less adven­ture and a cau­tious, almost cow­ard­ly spir­it, a sud­den burst of mis­chie­vous ideas and the inevitable con­se­quences of impul­sive­ness. In this “invin­ci­ble duo,” Peter Rab­bit always appears to be the boss, but is ulti­mate­ly res­cued by lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit’s wit and courage. This del­i­cate bal­ance is per­fect­ly exe­cut­ed.

As for the lat­est Peter Rab­bit car­toons, they’re a com­plete rein­ter­pre­ta­tion for a new era. The “Invin­ci­ble Duo” has become the “Invin­ci­ble Trio,” with the addi­tion of a female bun­ny, Lily the Short-Tailed Rab­bit. The char­ac­ters aban­don this del­i­cate bal­ance in favor of sim­ple, straight­for­ward stereo­types. Of this trio, Peter Rab­bit becomes the fear­less leader; Ben­jamin Rab­bit becomes a staunch fol­low­er. His timid­i­ty might be seen as a risk assess­ment, but his unwa­ver­ing loy­al­ty and trust serve as a per­fect foil to the rest of the team. Lily the Short-Tailed Rab­bit, the embod­i­ment of the god­dess of wis­dom, is pas­sion­ate about nat­ur­al obser­va­tion and sci­en­tif­ic explo­ration, and can be seen as a reflec­tion of Miss Pot­ter.

By the way, Peter Rab­bit in this ani­mat­ed series always car­ries a back­pack. In addi­tion to emer­gency tools, it also con­tains a diary of Peter Rab­bit’s father’s adven­tures and inven­tions, which is also a cre­ative new fea­ture. Fur­ther­more, in the car­toon and the sto­ry based on the car­toon, the “Invin­ci­ble Three Rab­bits” no longer wear shoes. The shoe­less rab­bits return to nature and run more hap­pi­ly!

(over)

…wait­ing to see the movie…

Relat­ed blog posts:

Peter Rab­bit’s Char­ac­ter Design and Devel­op­ment (Part 1)

Peter Rab­bit’s Char­ac­ter Design and Devel­op­ment (Part 2)

Peter Rab­bit’s Char­ac­ter Design and Devel­op­ment (Part 3)