Is Roger Rabbit a Sequel to Chinatown?

A few years after Who Framed Roger Rabbit came out, I read an article that suggested that it was a thinly veiled sequel or possibly a remake of Chinatown. At first I thought they were joking, but when I thought about it, I realized that they were probably right. There is a slight chance that this is just coincidence, but its pretty unlikely, the parallels are too close.

In order to see this, here is a high level synopsis of both films, leaving out important subplots in both cases.

Chinatown is the story of an idealist who had worked for the Los Angeles police force and whose partner had been murdered in a part of town where the rules are different. Chinatown. He is never the same. He resigns from the police force and becomes a private detective. He drinks too much. He does the lowest level of detective work, matrimony work, in which one member of a marriage seeks evidence that his or her partner is cheating in order to get a divorce. The movie begins when he is already a detective, and a woman who claims to be Evelyn Mulwray hires him to investigate her husband. In the course of executing his assignment, he becomes aware that the investigation is not what it seems but is part of something much larger. He slowly begins to realize that there is a conspiracy that involves corruption in the city government, corruption in the police force and some sort of criminal activity that involves the water supply to Los Angeles and the merger between Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Someone is murdered and our detective is threatened that if he continues his investigation he will be killed. He has to choose between going along with this or to stand up for what is right at the risk of his life. To do that, he must face his fears and return to that part of town where he was defeated long ago. He returns to Chinatown, confronts his enemy, but he is defeated again and someone else is murdered. Come on Jake, says a friend on the force, who pulls him away from the body. Its Chinatown.

Roger Rabbit is the story of an idealist who had worked for the Los Angeles police force and whose partner had been murdered in a part of town where the rules are different. Toontown. He is never the same. He resigns from the police force and becomes a private detective. He drinks too much. He does the lowest level of detective work, matrimony work, in which one member of a marriage seeks evidence that his or her partner is cheating in order to get a divorce. The movie begins when he is already a detective and Maroon Studios, who is trying to manage a star who is having trouble performing because of rumors about his wife, hires him to investigate the story and see if there is any truth to the rumors.  In the course of executing his assignment, he becomes aware that the investigation is not what it seems but is part of something much larger.  He slowly begins to realize that there is a conspiracy that involves corruption in the city government, corruption in the police force, and an attempt to purchase the mass transit system in Los Angeles in order to destroy it.  Someone is murdered and our detective is threatened that if he continues his investigation he will be killed.  He has to choose between going along with this or to stand up for what is right at the risk of his life. To do that he must face his fears and return to that part of town where he was defeated long ago. He returns to Toontown, confronts his enemy, and defeats him saving both the Red Line and Toontown as well. All the Toons come out to the edge of Toontown and acknowlege that he is their hero and to thank him.

Ok, so the ending is different and there are other differences as well, important differences, that make the films very different.  But its funny how when you line them up like this, they are obviously related to each other.

There is one more parallel that may not be obvious to someone who does not know the history of Los Angeles. Which is that both films describe, loosely, crimes that actually happened and are in fact fundmental to what Los Angeles is today. The movie Chinatown is a loosely fictionallized version of real events that happened in Los Angeles around the time of the merger with the San Fernando Valley. Roger Rabbit is loosely based on the real story of the destruction of mass transit in Los Angeles.  The crimes at the center of both stories were real crimes that famously involved corruption in the Los Angeles city government.