Space Jam is a 1996 film directed by Joe Pytka, adapted from his 1992/1993 shoe commercials, which follows the Looney Tunes characters as they recruit basketballer Michael Jordan to help free themselves from the tyranny of nefarious space aliens. Space Jam: A New Legacy is a 2021 film by Roll Bounce and Girls Trip director Malcolm D. Lee, which follows the Looney Tunes characters as they help basketballer LeBron James free himself from the tyranny of a nefarious computer system. The sequel, coming 25 years after the original, owes its existence to audience nostalgia; despite not being particularly good, the original nevertheless enthralled a generation raised on Jordan’s celebrity, persisting as comfort viewing ever since. Nostalgia has always been big business, going back to 1973’s American Graffiti and even earlier, but the past decade has put it into overdrive. Aging films and franchises are resuscitated in the likes of Ghostbusters or Top Gun: Maverick. Shows like Stranger Things attempt to recreate the feeling of a bygone era, or at least of its pop culture. But the most interesting, uniquely late-capitalism category of nostalgia film is one championed by Warner Bros. - a category into which Space Jam 2, while also a sequel to a quarter-century-old movie, fits perfectly. Watch the cameo-laden trailer for Space Jam: A New Legacy below: [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=[URL]https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/03/space-jam-a-new-legacy-official-trailer[/URL]] The philosophy behind this subgenre: Why stop at reviving one brand when the studio has a whole library of them at its disposal? In addition to the Looney Tunes characters, Space Jam: A New Legacy contains appearances by and references to (among others) The Iron Giant, King Kong, Batman, Robin, Superman, Mr. Freeze, The Joker, The Penguin, Gandalf, Scooby-Doo, Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Space Ghost, The Mask, and characters from The Matrix, Mad Max: Fury Road, Game of Thrones, It, The Wizard of Oz, The Conjuring, and maybe even Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Famously, predatory cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew does not appear - but the rape-obsessed “droogs” from A Clockwork Orange do. What stands out here isn’t hypocrisy over which specific sex offenders Warners elected to include in a kids movie, or even the selection of characters at all. It’s Warner’s cynical approach to its intellectual property. Space Jam: A New Legacy isn’t the first Warners film to do this. It is, at the very least, the fifth. Three of its four Lego movies see most of their active participants come from Warner properties like Batman, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter (or rival franchises licensed through Lego). Ready Player One added more external brands to Warners’ own, largely due to director Steven Spielberg’s unparalleled pull with the industry. And now, Space Jam joins the fray, with a near-identical roster of Warner Bros. characters and even a digital-universe aesthetic evoking that of Spielberg’s film. The connecting factor? The screen is filled, constantly, with cameos from numerous disconnected pieces of pop culture. Crucially, these aren’t homages, like The Cabin in the Woods’ sly remixes of horror icons. They are the actual characters, plucked from the Warners vault with no licensing necessary, and chosen seemingly for that reason. And sure, the studio has plenty of history to celebrate. Beyond Space Jam’s franchisey background extras, Warner Bros. has one of the best back-catalogues of movies for adults, ranging all the way up to envelope-pushing films from auteurs like Nicolas Roeg and Ken Russell. Its output in the 1970s was a series of spectacular wins for mature entertainment, winning audiences and Oscars alike. Of course, it’s laughable to think that you’d see The Devils or Performance referenced in A New Legacy - but realistically, it’s just as bizarre for the other stuff to show up in a movie that has no connection to it whatsoever. [caption id="attachment_2498522" align="aligncenter" width="1920"]
War Boys and droogs and Scooby-Doo -- and many other familiar faces pop up in the Space Jam 2 trailer.[/caption] Decisions like these aren’t driven by story or character. It’s hard to argue that the new Space Jam wouldn’t be purer of story, style, and purpose (as much as those things matter in such a film) were it to stick to the Looney Tunes exclusively. For all the first Space Jam’s faults, the basic premise - a sports movie governed by cartoon physics - has potential, as proven by the existence of Shaolin Soccer. These decisions also aren’t even really aimed at the film’s ostensible child demographic; who among them would have any idea what a War Boy is? Rather, the target audience for these character roll-calls is adults with cultural memories that fondly remember titles like The Iron Giant, Game of Thrones, and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. It’s an audience that probably owns, or has thought of owning, one of those posters that has a whole bunch of pop-culture icons hanging out in close proximity. It’s the audience that will go see the upcoming DC, Matrix, Harry Potter, and Conjuring films Warner Bros. has on its slate, so it makes sense to wave those brands in front of them. For that generation, the cameoing characters’ familiarity (and incongruity, when seen together) sparks an instinctive chuckle of recognition. “I remember enjoying that,” muses Warners’ idealised nostalgic viewer, “thus I must also be enjoying this.” The same could be said for memories of Space Jam itself. This aggressive IP-brandishing makes depressing sense given the current media landscape. Every studio is busy consolidating brands, mostly angling them toward in-house streaming services. Disney is the most visible, with acquired brands like Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox helping to sell its various streaming offerings around the world. Warners has been doing the same with HBO Max, but movies like the Lego films or Space Jam are more blatant statements of intent. Where Disney’s dominant branded entertainment has been mostly regular and confident, there’s a different tone to the Warner Bros. brand assertion. Like a street hawker spreading a coat full of watches, the studio comes across as desperate, machine-gunning its popular characters into audiences’ faces to remind them that some treasured memories come from Warner properties, too. Ironically, screaming that these brands are still relevant only makes one question whether they actually are. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/pepe-le-pew-cut-from-space-jam-2-ign-news"] The sad conclusion one must draw from all this speaks to the specific ways in which the studio values its back catalogue. Based on films like Space Jam and Ready Player One, the studio doesn’t see context or stories in its vault. It sees only IP to be exploited; iconography to be rubber-stamped into new environments, sometimes wildly inappropriately, to keep the properties relevant. Some of that exploitation lucks out and produces good films (Mad Max: Fury Road being probably the most wildly successful of the bunch), but ultimately, it’s still exploitation. IP is only as valuable as an audience’s awareness of it, after all, and they’re not going to get that gritty Clockwork Orange reboot off the ground if today’s kids aren’t raised seeing the droogs in their basketball cartoons. Like its spiritual predecessors, Space Jam: A New Legacy will undoubtedly do well at the box office. Warners will surely be watching to see if, say, Jabberjaw the cartoon shark becomes a breakout character. Regardless, the studio is screaming into the void, yearning to prove itself in an entertainment market where IP ownership is king. The actual characters don’t matter, only their place in the collective consciousness. A Clockwork Orange used to be known as a singular work of artistic vision. Now it’s just another piece of iconography to slap onto one of many inevitable Space Jam Funko Pops, sandwiched somewhere between Scrappy-Doo and Pennywise. Hope you like brands, because they’re the future.
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War Boys and droogs and Scooby-Doo -- and many other familiar faces pop up in the Space Jam 2 trailer.[/caption] Decisions like these aren’t driven by story or character. It’s hard to argue that the new Space Jam wouldn’t be purer of story, style, and purpose (as much as those things matter in such a film) were it to stick to the Looney Tunes exclusively. For all the first Space Jam’s faults, the basic premise - a sports movie governed by cartoon physics - has potential, as proven by the existence of Shaolin Soccer. These decisions also aren’t even really aimed at the film’s ostensible child demographic; who among them would have any idea what a War Boy is? Rather, the target audience for these character roll-calls is adults with cultural memories that fondly remember titles like The Iron Giant, Game of Thrones, and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. It’s an audience that probably owns, or has thought of owning, one of those posters that has a whole bunch of pop-culture icons hanging out in close proximity. It’s the audience that will go see the upcoming DC, Matrix, Harry Potter, and Conjuring films Warner Bros. has on its slate, so it makes sense to wave those brands in front of them. For that generation, the cameoing characters’ familiarity (and incongruity, when seen together) sparks an instinctive chuckle of recognition. “I remember enjoying that,” muses Warners’ idealised nostalgic viewer, “thus I must also be enjoying this.” The same could be said for memories of Space Jam itself. This aggressive IP-brandishing makes depressing sense given the current media landscape. Every studio is busy consolidating brands, mostly angling them toward in-house streaming services. Disney is the most visible, with acquired brands like Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox helping to sell its various streaming offerings around the world. Warners has been doing the same with HBO Max, but movies like the Lego films or Space Jam are more blatant statements of intent. Where Disney’s dominant branded entertainment has been mostly regular and confident, there’s a different tone to the Warner Bros. brand assertion. Like a street hawker spreading a coat full of watches, the studio comes across as desperate, machine-gunning its popular characters into audiences’ faces to remind them that some treasured memories come from Warner properties, too. Ironically, screaming that these brands are still relevant only makes one question whether they actually are. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/pepe-le-pew-cut-from-space-jam-2-ign-news"] The sad conclusion one must draw from all this speaks to the specific ways in which the studio values its back catalogue. Based on films like Space Jam and Ready Player One, the studio doesn’t see context or stories in its vault. It sees only IP to be exploited; iconography to be rubber-stamped into new environments, sometimes wildly inappropriately, to keep the properties relevant. Some of that exploitation lucks out and produces good films (Mad Max: Fury Road being probably the most wildly successful of the bunch), but ultimately, it’s still exploitation. IP is only as valuable as an audience’s awareness of it, after all, and they’re not going to get that gritty Clockwork Orange reboot off the ground if today’s kids aren’t raised seeing the droogs in their basketball cartoons. Like its spiritual predecessors, Space Jam: A New Legacy will undoubtedly do well at the box office. Warners will surely be watching to see if, say, Jabberjaw the cartoon shark becomes a breakout character. Regardless, the studio is screaming into the void, yearning to prove itself in an entertainment market where IP ownership is king. The actual characters don’t matter, only their place in the collective consciousness. A Clockwork Orange used to be known as a singular work of artistic vision. Now it’s just another piece of iconography to slap onto one of many inevitable Space Jam Funko Pops, sandwiched somewhere between Scrappy-Doo and Pennywise. Hope you like brands, because they’re the future.Continue reading...