It may have taken twenty-five years, but Space Jam finally has a sequel. Yes, the Looney Tunes are back on the basketball court in a high stakes game, this time starring LeBron James in place of Michael Jordan, for a more contemporary take on the concept. Though Space Jam: A New Legacy provides some zany fun and ironic entertainment, its profuse emphasis on Warner Brothers properties as a whole (as opposed to just the Looney Tunes) may prevent the film from being the Space Jam follow-up fans have been waiting two and a half decades for.
I guess, to be fair, the original 1996 Space Jam isn’t exactly what you would call a “good movie.” But it’s such a distinctly 90s absurdity that it has a certain appeal: It threw Michael Jordan – the most famous athlete in the world at the time – into a family comedy alongside the Looney Tunes. It was the kind of movie concept that no one seemed to question back in the 90s, but these days could only exist in the form of a nostalgic sequel to those times as evidenced by A New Legacy.
Interestingly, the original also seemed to add to the mystique of Michael Jordan himself. I’m not about to pretend that I know much about sports (I’m a nerd writing a blog about movies and video games, after all), but I do know that Michael Jordan is one of those rare individuals who seems to transcend their craft. Back when I was a kid during the days of the original Jam up to today, Michael Jordan has always been talked about as an almost mythic figure, and Space Jam leaned into that. Not only did it present Jordan as a kind of superhero who was needed to save the beloved cartoon characters, but the movie itself was basically a giant Michael Jordan vehicle. In particular, its soundtrack (specifically “I Believe I can Fly” and “Fly Like an Eagle”) feel more associated with Jordan than they do the film itself. Space Jam didn’t use Michael Jordan to sell itself, it used itself to promote Michael Jordan. Space Jam was effectively just a part of the Michael Jordan legend.
By contrast, Space Jam: A New Legacy kind of just recycles the original template, and features LeBron James as part of it. James is simply thrust into the events of this movie, as opposed to being its nexus. On the plus side, James is probably a better actor than Jordan.
The story here is that the very real LeBron James is having trouble connecting with his very fictional son Dom (Cedric Joe). LeBron wants his son to follow in his footsteps on the basketball court, while Dom wants to create video games. LeBron finds video games to be nothing but a distraction, with the film’s rather weak reasoning for this being that LeBron himself was briefly distracted by a Game Boy before a basketball game as a kid. But after his wife informs him that Dom has nearly finished creating his own game, LeBron starts to take interest in his son’s passion. Dom’s game is “Domball” a very video game-y take on basketball (so it’s basically NBA Jam). Though LeBron and Dom start to connect, a glitch crashes the game and ruins the moment. To cheer up his son, LeBron invites Dom to tag along to a “movie deal thing” with him the next day.
The movie deal is at Warner Bros., which the film is sure to tell us is the “studio behind all the classics” (I think Universal and Disney might have something to say about that). The studio has recently created the Warner Bros. “Serververse” using an AI called Al-G Rhythm (an already weak pun which is only undermined by the fact the movie uses the word algorithm about 50 times). Through an app called Warner 3000, people can use the Serververse to scan digital copies of themselves into the movies. Warner Bros. wants LeBron to be the spokesperson for the Serververse, but the basketball superstar shoots down the idea hard (needlessly hard, really). Though Dom shows that he might be interested in helping with the idea, and also lets it slip that he plans to attend “E3 Game Developer Camp” in the coming week, which naturally conflicts with the basketball camp that takes place at the same time (as we all know, basketball and video games are destined to conflict with each other). This causes LeBron and Dom to butt heads yet again.
Unbeknownst to everyone, Al-G Rhythm (Don Cheadle) has developed self-awareness, and has taken offense to LeBron’s dismissal of his hard work. Al-G plans to use Dom’s interest in the Serververse to his advantage in his planned revenge on LeBron James. Al-G lures Dom to some high tech secret lab within Warner Bros. Studios (which I’m sure actually exists), and zaps the boy into the world of the Serververse, and LeBron soon afterwards. Al-G then challenges LeBron to a game of basketball. He gives LeBron a full day to find a team of Warner Bros. characters to compete against a team of his own. If LeBron wins, he and his son get to go home. If Al-G wins, LeBron is stuck in the Serververse forever (I guess as its mascot, since he didn’t like the idea of being its spokesperson).
Al-G of course intends to cheat, and plans on using Dom’s game design skills to generate a super team of overpowered characters. He gives LeBron a further disadvantage by dumping the basketball star in the Looney Tunes world of the Serververse, or the “land of the rejects” as Al-G calls it (which seems a bit weird, seeing as Al-G was created by Warner Bros. and the Looney Tunes are the studio’s iconic mascots. Can you imagine a Disney film calling Mickey and friends “rejects?”).
When LeBron lands in the Looney Tunes world (becoming a cartoon himself in the process), he soon learns that Bugs Bunny is the only Tune left, as Al-G separated the Tunes by promising them greater opportunities elsewhere in the Serververse. Bugs Bunny agrees to help LeBron in his quest to find a basketball team, and after hijacking Marvin the Martian’s spaceship, they set out into the Serververse to find the perfect dream team, though Bugs is using this as an excuse to reunite the Looney Tunes.
From here, much of the movie plays out like a big HBO Max commercial, with Bugs and LeBron travelling to the worlds of different Warner Bros. properties and extracting Looney Tunes from them. To be fair, there is some fun to be had here: Having the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote superimposed into Mad Max: Fury Road just feels right. And while an Austin Powers reference may not be most timeless, I’d be lying if I said seeing Elmer Fudd playing the role of Mini-Me didn’t put a smile on my face.
In a way, Space Jam: A New Legacy kind of reminds me of Ralph Breaks the Internet, the unfortunately-titled but otherwise pretty great sequel to Wreck-It Ralph. Though that movie had some fun showcasing different Disney properties, it never lost sight of telling its own story. A New Legacy doesn’t possess that restraint, and instead devolves into one cameo after another just for the hell of it, and the whole “Looney Tunes team up with an NBA star” concept of the series kind of gets lost in the shuffle. Did the world really need another Matrix reference? And I could live a full and happy life never seeing Rick and Morty ever again.
It all just becomes too much. The idea of using Space Jam as a means of a big Roger Rabbit-style crossover of Warner Bros. properties isn’t a terrible idea in concept, and it could have been fun if it played out like a loving tribute to the history of the studio. But the movie becomes so engrossed in the cameos and name drops that it loses the whole “Space Jam” aspect after a while. The film doesn’t even do anything really substantial with the properties, even missing the opportunity to use Warner Bros. villains for Al-G’s team, which would have at least been a more meaningful usage of these characters than simply having them cheer in the audience of the climactic game, which is what the film does end up doing (though respect to the guy giving it his all with his Arnold Schwarzenegger Mr. Freeze impression, complete with the character’s bathrobe from Batman & Robin).
The villains we do get here are the “Goon Squad,” a team of monster-ized versions of basketball players created by Al-G using Dom’s video game and its scanning technology. They include a naga, a birdman, a spider, a water/fire hybrid, and Dom himself, whom Al-G has been manipulating with flattery (and who doesn’t know his father’s freedom is on the line). Although I’m sure some won’t like the CG garishness of them, I do appreciate that the film makes its villains very distinct from those of its predecessor.
Speaking of CG garishness, it should also be pointed out that during the big game in the film’s third act, the Looney Tunes get a CG makeover. I don’t want to sound like one of those people who needlessly complains about CG, but I do have to say it is a little bit of a disappointment that we only get to see either traditionally animated Looney Tunes interacting with a traditionally animated LeBron James, or CG Looney Tunes interacting with real life LeBron James. In this day and age when live-action and traditional animation no longer share the screen together, shouldn’t the Space Jam sequel, of all movies, have been the primed opportunity to bring that idea back? If anything, it would have made the movie standout from a visual perspective in 2021.
Another weird thing about the movie is that the big basketball game at the end isn’t actually basketball. It’s Domball. As in, the video game that LeBron James’ fictional son created. I suppose no one is watching a Space Jam movie for a legit basketball game, and the 1996 film saw the Looney Tunes perform their usual antics within the game (which should surely constitute cheating), so I guess it isn’t a big deal. But Domball is so loose with its rules – which are seemingly made up as they go – that it does take something away from the film’s finale. You kind of have to understand the rules of a game before you can feel the tension in it.
One of the big issues with A New Legacy is its lack of a memorable soundtrack. I can still remember as a kid, how inescapable the soundtrack to the original film was. I mentioned how the soundtrack to the 1996 film added to the ‘legend’ of Michael Jordan. But there’s really nothing here that does the same for LeBron James. Even as I’m writing this, I can’t remember any of the songs or music from the film. The soundtrack doesn’t do anything for the film or for LeBron.
Still, as negative as I’m being in regards to Space Jam: A New Legacy, I have to admit I was entertained at times. LeBron James, like Michael Jordan in the original, has an inexplicable charisma as a movie star, despite not being one in the traditional sense (with LeBron getting extra points for landing the comedy). The movie has some jokes that work, a number of the Looney Tunes get their moment to shine in the big game, and Don Cheadle seems to be having a good time hamming it up as the villain. It’s a fun movie when it wants to be.
The problem with A New Legacy is that its place as a Space Jam sequel can really get drowned out with all the other movies going on around it. The references (and straight-up recreations) of other movies is fun for a while, but they end up feeling like padding after a point. Much like the original movie, it seems like there wasn’t much to the script other than the basic premise. So in between LeBron meeting Bugs Bunny and the big game at the end, the film throws in as many of these other movies as it can as to stretch out the running time. Maybe a little more time dedicated to the main plot could have helped make this a legitimately good Space Jam movie (and filled in some of the gaps in the plot, like why Al-G wanted to separate the Tunes in the first place). As it is, Space Jam: A New Legacy might scratch the itch for a goofy good time in the same vein as the original, though it’s so similar to the first movie in premise, and so busy showing off other movies, that it can’t quite create a charm of its own.
5
Wizard Dojo 