Like it or not, it’s time to pop, now. Welcome to the space jam. Once again.
As a boon to Elmer Fudd fans everywhere, NBA superstar LeBron James has revived the classic Warner Bros. animation / live action hybrid franchise. The main difference between the original and the sequel is that our Looney Tunes heroes don’t fly into space, but are trapped in a graphic representation of the Warner content server buried deep beneath beautiful downtown Burbank.
It gets confusing here. In essence, this is new Space Jam Film exists in a world where the old Space Jam Film also exists. You can see it as one of the films that Warner executives add LeBron to in the first part of the film. So if the first Space Jam is a movie in the Space Jam 2 Universe, then why doesn’t LeBron James admit he saw the movie? Why isn’t he excited to put the Looney Tunes together to play a high-stakes basketball game when he knows they’ve already done it and won?
Maybe I’m trying too hard to understand a kids ‘movie, but most kids’ movies (think Pixar) make a lot of sense and are intricately drawn, well-written scripts. What went wrong here? Why did the latest Space Jam give me a feel? Space sad?
In one new episode of Galaxy Brains, Jonah Ray and I are made up of actor, comedian, basketball fan and presenter of the Ball sometimes lies Podcast, Adam Pally. Adam brings his firsthand experience with animated characters, keen storytelling sense, and wit to our lazy attempt at understanding Space Jam: A New Legacy.
Adam: If this movie is set in pop culture, then they’d know what’s going on. The logic was a bit off for me. It was like half a meta. If we were to believe that LeBron and his family have every social connection we know in the real world today, then they would know there is a movie in which this has happened before. So I feel like they missed a right moment to acknowledge that. And then I felt like they missed a real moment, if there’s the old Space Jam, how come we can’t see Michael Jordan playing LeBron? That was the time to do it.
Dave: Michael Jordan should be on the server.
Adam: Yes of course. That is the debate we all want to see in the sequel.
Dave: Listen to me Adam: you were there Sonic the Hedgehog. Are you going to add Tails and Knuckles to the sequel that you also star in? Yes. You don’t use the first one. You save them for continuation. So maybe Jordan will be against LeBron Space Jam 3.
Adam: You’re not going to do a sequel like this – you do one and then wait 20 years.
Jonah: The sequel wouldn’t even really be a space jam. It could be more of one Looney Tunes: Back in Action
like Looney Tunes in the real world.Dave: Because Bugs now lives in the real world after his death.
Adam: I honestly really hated that part. The executives are to blame for this film. I know they fired the director in the middle. Feels like nobody knew how to pull this out? So they just threw everything on the wall. And it became unnecessarily confusing.
Dave: Basketball doesn’t make sense to me because it’s a video game. Ultimately, these aren’t real basketball rules. It’s kind of like an NBA jam situation. And I understand why they do that. I understand it’s kind of a cartoon world. But I also try to understand what is at stake all the time.
Adam: I liked that. I would like to That Lego Movie Mood of everyone to make their own individual and things different. And so LeBron has to learn basketball differently. Right. By thinking of the funniest thing, he will win the game. And I think they finally got there. But I feel like it was really overloaded. We didn’t need all of these weird villains.
Dave: And I really fucking hate these monsters.
Adam: The Goon Squad screwed me up.