Voltaire is the secondary antagonist in the original version of the 1988 Disney/Touchstone live-action/animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Biography[]
During development of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it was originally conceived for Judge Doom to have a pet vulture named Voltaire to accompany him and the Toon Patrol. At the very least, Voltaire was included as of the third draft of the film's script, which had Who Shot Roger Rabbit as the working title.
Voltaire first appeared upon the arrival of Judge Doom and the Toon Patrol to the ACME Factory to investigate Marvin Acme's murder supposedly at the hands of Roger Rabbit. During the visit, Judge Doom finds a Toon Gopher (replaced by a Toon Shoe in the finished film) whom he decides to execute in front of Eddie Valiant for soiling his robe. While the Toon Gopher tries to make his way out of there, Doom orders Voltaire, who had been posing as the hood ornament of Doom's black Lincoln touring car, to catch the gopher. Voltaire does so and drops the gopher to the Toon Patrol, who restrain him until Doom's kangaroo court sentences him to death, leading the Toon Gopher to be "dipped" by Doom.
Voltaire then accompanies Judge Doom and the Toon Patrol to Dolores' bar, perched on his owner's shoulder. While in the establishment, Doom pours a drink into his newly cleaned glass and gently pours it down Voltaire's gullet. When Eddie and Roger escape the bar, Voltaire accompanies the Toon Patrol in their chase by flying after Benny the Cab. However, Eddie and Roger outsmart them and throw them their dynamite back to escape, leaving Voltaire and the weasels behind.
During the film's climax, Voltaire is cleaning his fingernails when Roger arrives and starts threatening Doom due to his crimes, leading Voltaire to drop an ACME Ton-Of-Bricks off the shelf on the rabbit. When Eddie starts to sing a song to lead the Toon Patrol to laugh to death, Voltaire doesn't laugh like the weasels and crashes through the skylight of the Dip Machine to stop Eddie from rescuing Roger and Jessica, grabbing him and flying away from the Dip Machine, leading Eddie to grab a handful of ACME Small Pills as Voltaire pulls him skyward to shrink the buzzard. This makes Voltaire shrink to the size of a chick and let Eddie go. However, Voltaire finds a box of ACME Big Pills and grows three times his original size. Fortunately, Eddie reaches the Dip Machine's turret and blasts one of Voltaire's wings off with a Dip blast, leading Voltaire to spin earthward like a flaming Messerschmitt and land in a Dip vat where he dissolves into a black pool. His death then leads an angry Judge Doom to face Valiant, who then succeeds in defeating him.
Despite having been already designed, Voltaire was ultimately cut out by the filmmakers from the film due to their interest to finish the film on schedule, opting to scrap Voltaire to save time. As such, much of Voltaire's actions during the climax were given to some of the Toon Patrol's weasels (for example, Smartass fulfills his place as Judge Doom's second-in-command as well as the only one of Doom's henchmen who dies dipped and Greasy fills his role as the one who drops bricks on Roger). Nevertheless, Voltaire was still included in the original Judge Doom bendable action figure and appeared in the film's NES video game.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Voltaire is named after one of the French Enlightenment philosophers and a founding father of the ideas behind the French Revolution.
- His design was based on one of the vultures from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
- When he was removed from the film, the Toon Patrol became more major characters and filled in for several roles that Voltaire originally would've done. For instance, Greasy ended up dropping bricks on Roger Rabbit, and Smarty ended up getting dipped.