Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)
Directed by Malcolm D. Lee
When LeBron and his young son Dom are trapped in a digital space by a rogue A.I., LeBron must get them home safe by leading Bugs, Lola Bunny and the whole gang of notoriously undisciplined Looney Tunes to victory over the A.I.'s digitized champions on the court. It's Tunes versus Goons in the highest-stakes challenge of his life.
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13 films that influenced Space Jam: A New Legacy
What critics say influenced Space Jam: A New Legacy
As was the case with the fondly remembered (by some) but quite mediocre “Space Jam” from 1996, the spiritual sequel isn’t so much a movie as it is a product placement mashup utilizing the technology of the day to combine live action with animation, with a slow buildup to a climactic hoops contest that lasts longer than the final minutes of an NBA playoff game.
The learning-to-be-a-better-parent theme means "A New Legacy" requires more acting from James than the original "Space Jam" did from Michael Jordan.
It took 25 years for Warner Bros. to get around to making a sequel to their blockbuster hit Space Jam (1996), the live-action/animation hybrid that teamed a squad of Looney Tunes with basketball superstar Michael Jordan.
At one point in the film, which bears, um, certain similarities to “Space Jam,” the 1996 film starring Michael Jordan and a bevy of Looney Tunes characters, LeBron James is explaining the situation to Bugs Bunny (voice of Jeff Bergman).
When it comes to bringing the Looney Tunes back together, Space Jam: A New Legacy does admittedly demonstrate a desire to get playfully fun, briefly taking the characters inside scenes from Mad Max: Fury Road, The Matrix, and a few others with inspired results (Foghorn Leghorn also hilariously recites a Game of Thrones catchphrase).
There are nods to The Wizard of Oz , Casablanca , A Clockwork Orange , King Kong , The Matrix , and Mad Max: Fury Road , among many others.
But so much of the film, directed by Malcolm D. Lee and credited to six screenwriters, functions as brand management, depicting a dazzling cinematic theme park filled with WB’s best-known titles (Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, The Matrix, even Casablanca) in an effort to equal the cultural ubiquity of rival studio Disney.
For no particular reason other than it happened in the first movie, James winds up meeting Bugs Bunny, who insists on slyly overriding his new friend’s more powerful recruitment suggestions (Superman, Trinity from The Matrix , et. al) in favor of gathering up the scattered Looney Tunes—who, you will recall, are a famously warm, supportive, and basketball-loving surrogate family.
We get callbacks and Easter Eggs from the likes of Casablanca (1942) to The Matrix (1999).
Kids won’t get the nods to Austin Powers (1997), and their parents won’t care.
In any case, the movie then gives itself endless free throws of references to actual WB titles, including Casablanca, Game of Thrones, The Matrix, Superman, Mad Max and Austin Powers .
One is for Warner Bros.: The studio ostentatiously flips through its library of properties throughout the film, most notably in a series of brief clips of James gathering Tunes who have relocated to The Matrix and Austin Powers and, most distressingly, Casablanca .
When it comes to bringing the Looney Tunes back together, Space Jam: A New Legacy does admittedly demonstrate a desire to get playfully fun, briefly taking the characters inside scenes from Mad Max: Fury Road, The Matrix, and a few others with inspired results (Foghorn Leghorn also hilariously recites a Game of Thrones catchphrase).
There are nods to The Wizard of Oz , Casablanca , A Clockwork Orange , King Kong , The Matrix , and Mad Max: Fury Road , among many others.
Everything from Mad Max: Fury Road and Rick and Morty to Austin Powers and Harry Potter get playful — and occasionally really clever, in the case of Fury Road — nods and call-outs in James’ adventure through the WB servers.
Director Malcolm D. Lee ("Girls Trip") does his best to dodge the conceptual pitfalls, finding a few giggles when Wile E. Coyote joins a chase scene from "Mad Max: Fury Road."
The pair race through the ServerVerse together in Marvin the Martian’s flying saucer, visiting DC superheroes like Batman and Wonder Woman, stopping for Matrix slow-motion bullet gags and a Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) sketch with Wile E. Coyote, all while busily collecting the other ‘toons.
Before that, LeBron and Bugs have to get their Tune Squad together, so they enter famous scenes in an array of Warner Bros. movies and TV shows to recruit familiar personalities: Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner hanging with War Boys in “Mad Max: Fury Road” makes sense, Foghorn Leghorn riding a “Game of Thrones” dragon, not so much.
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Everyone from Pennywise to the nuns from Ken Russell’s “The Devils” show up.
For whatever it’s worth, New Legacy will be the only 2021 movie to feature The Mask, Austin Powers, Jabberjaw, a nun from Ken Russell’s The Devils, Superman, and Foghorn Leghorn.
As onlookers emerge from the hills, the stands begin to overflow with a generation’s worth of Warner Brothers’ characters — including Jane Hudson from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Alex’s droogs from A Clockwork Orange, and, for some reason, the nuns from Ken Russell’s The Devils.
As onlookers emerge from the hills, the stands begin to overflow with a generation’s worth of Warner Brothers’ characters — including Jane Hudson from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Alex’s droogs from A Clockwork Orange, and, for some reason, the nuns from Ken Russell’s The Devils.
At one point, in the crowd of the big game, you see the Penguin’s nightmare-clown cronies — as in, from Batman Returns — alongside Pennywise the actual nightmare Clown, and White Walkers from Game of Thrones, and I’m positive I spotted one of the Wicked Witch’s flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz.
Once James gets hurled into ‘Tune Town’ with the so-called rejects, Space Jam: A New Legacy goes full-blown Ready Player One (2018), with the NBA star and Bugs Bunny teaming up to track down all the other Looney Tunes characters, who’ve been scattered across the ServerVerse.
Anyone who found fellow IP-extravaganza Ready Player One (2018) a soulless exercise in nostalgia will be even more depressed by what this kids movie does to characters they love, as well as baffled by the presence of ones they never cared about in the first place.
Pig looks like Casablanca next to Space Jam: A New Legacy , an uninspired mashup of Looney Toons and Steven Spielberg’s Hook and Ready Player One , enacted by an NBA legend who can’t act (LeBron James, natch), and which was likely written and possibly even made by an algorithm — maybe even the one played by an overqualified Don Cheadle.
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Director Malcolm D. Lee’s Space Jam: A New Legacy is the latest such delayed sequel, but it has as much in common with Space Jam (1996) as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) has with Jumanji (1995): they exist within the same narrative universe, but have no direct ties.
Basically, a section of this movie is Bugs and LeBron doing the delightful 2011 movie The Muppets , with jokes that fall somewhere between worse and zero, spliced with famous cartoon characters inserted into real clips of Warner movies, just like in that beloved Looney Tunes program Muppet Babies .