Come on and Slam... Again? (Thoughts on the Space Jam 2 trailer)

     So I have to start this off by saying I know next to nothing about basketball. I don't know much about sports in general, and normally this would be a major deterrent to my enjoyment of a movie around sports. Space Jam, however, is such a creative and strange idea that even though Basketball was the central theme of the movie, I still enjoyed it a lot when I watched it for the first time. It's been a long time since I saw it last, but it's such a weird premise that it's a movie that has always stuck in my mind. As a huge fan of cartoons in general, I was of course drawn in by the premise of the Looney Tunes interacting with the likes of real stars, Michael Jordan, Bill Murray, and Wayne Knight. It was a crazy movie that was done in the style of Who Framed Roger Rabbit with the animated characters interacting with the real ones, and sometimes causing the humans to act and behave in more cartoony ways. The year is now 2021 and clearly I wasn't the only one to be impacted in one way or another, as they've been working on a sequel to that film since 2019 after the project was first announced in 2014 with Lebron James taking over as lead/ producer. Very little information has trickled out since that time, but as of just a few days ago, a first trailer was released for Space Jam: A New Legacy. This trailer honestly has so much to go over that I felt like it would be a good opportunity to punch up my analysis skills from scanning through the trailer and pulling out whatever I could find. Join me, if you will, in this little trip to the "Tune World," and let's see what wacky things we can find.

Cartoon Catastrophe?

    This trailer begins with Lebron James, as himself, teaching his son to play basketball and they get into a fight, his son isn't taking it seriously and says his dad doesn't let him be himself. This is already a lot deeper than I expected this plot to go, I have to be honest. His son runs off an elevator and Lebron looks for him in a room with a bunch of supercomputer terminals, then sees his son get sucked into a portal of a thing, before Lebron himself gets sucked into whatever this situation is. He ends up in a cyber world, after flying by what appears to be the Game of Thrones planet and Wizard of Oz world, he comes face to face with Don Cheadle, who's like the "cyber god" of the Warner Bros. Universe, which they call "the Serververse." Cheadle sends Lebron down to the Looney Tunes world after informing him that he has his son and the only way to get him back is to beat him and his team in basketball. Lebron becomes a cartoon character on arrival and meets Bugs Bunny of course. The next shot has him planning out his super basketball team, he writes down the names "Superman, Gandalf, King Kong, and Iron Giant," for him to recruit, but then the Tunes try to prove that they're really good at basketball. I guess Lebron eventually goes with them, because the next scene shows a whole bunch of cartoon and WB properties in a shot seemingly pulled from Ready Player One (which we'll get to later), all coming to see Lebron and the new Tune Squad. Yes, they're called the Tune Squad again and I'm hoping we'll get some mention of Jordan's involvement with the team from before, if we don't get any sort of official cameo from MJ himself, that is. There's a weird plot point where something happens and Lebron goes back to normal, but the Looney Tunes all become 3D CGI characters for some reason. Presumably, this is to show how far technology has come in the 25 years since the original one has come out, but in terms of characterization, I don't really understand it. The rest of the trailer is devoted to introducing Don Cheadle's "Goon Squad," made up of robots or characters that seem to control the elements, who the Tune Squad will have to face off against. Then we see some basketball action from some other characters, and the trailer ends with Granny making a shot using her walker and breakdancing on top of it to the surprise of the others. This is a lot to unpack, but if you can believe it, this trailer is only just under three minutes long and it still has more that I haven't discussed.

Ready Player Bunny

    If you can recall, a few years ago, Warner Bros. put out a little gem of a film called Ready Player One, based on the novel of the same name. Honestly the story didn't make much of an impact on me when I saw the movie, it was fine, but the real draw of the film was all of the special effects and references to other properties such as Ghostbusters, King Kong, The Iron Giant, Mortal Kombat, and many others. I bring this movie up mainly to talk about how this movie appears to draw inspiration from that one in that regard. In this trailer we see a whole lot of references and I'm going to be honest, there are already so many Youtube videos out there titled, "Look at all the references, number 13 will blow your minddd" that I'm not going to attempt to talk about all of these. I will, however, talk about a few of them that really caught my eye and made me excited to see. The references to "Game of Thrones" and The Wizard of Oz that I mentioned before are both pretty quick, but the sentiment and pace of these two makes me excited for all the easter eggs in this. In this trailer, we see a lot of different Hanna Barbera cartoon characters, including the Mystery Machine from "Scooby Doo," Magilla Gorilla, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, and Jabberjaw. I can only hope that the Jetsons and some of the characters from Scooby Doo will show up, but we'll have to see. Returning from Ready Player One, we see The Iron Giant and King Kong running around and causing all kinds of mayhem in the streets of this new converged world containing all of these different brands and characters. Some of the most interesting references I didn't even catch until I was watching this trailer again, but in one scene, a UFO flies past a few other worlds. One of which is an entirely black and white world where there's a giant sign that says "The Maltese Falcon" which is a famous Film Noir, leading me to believe that we'll have some reference to WB's history with the Noir genre, hopefully even a reference to Casablanca, one of my favorites. The fact that the theme for Warner Bros. that plays before every movie comes from Casablanca still floors me, and I'm hoping to see a passing reference to Rick's Cafe. The next planet the UFO passes in front of is split into two hemispheres, with one looking much darker than the other, and appears to be emitting the Bat Signal. That's right, the DC Universe appears to be represented here, which is obvious when Lebron already put Superman down on the board when he was writing his list of basketball team members, but it's nice to see the actual world that the character comes from.

    This trailer is full of the campy goodness that made up the original, though the story seems to be much more focused on Lebron. There are real personal stakes other than the world domination angle as his son (in the movie, anyways) is kidnapped, whereas in the original Space Jam, the Looney Tunes just kidnap Michael Jordan while he's trying to play golf because they need him to train them to play basketball. We are left with a lot of questions from this trailer, of course. Will Lebron's arm stretch to cartoony lengths and do a dunk from half court like Jordan did? Will we see Bill Murray and Wayne Knight return again for some reason (I hope so)? Will Lebron's secret stuff save the day, Or does Bugs have some of Michael's stashed away somewhere? We'll have to see, and fortunately, the wait won't be too long, as the film is set to be released on HBO Max and (maybe) in theaters on July 16.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I hope you're all doing well! Are you excited for the new Space Jam movie? I'll be honest, when I first heard about this project a long time ago, I thought it sounded like a weird move and a cash grab for sure, but now that I've seen the trailer, I agree with my original sentiments. I'm sure people are saying that Space Jam was a perfect movie and they should leave it alone, but when you look at it, it's an extremely weird and needlessly complicated premise, and I'm cautiously happy that we're getting more of it. Also I'm aware of the shocking number of people that are mad about how Lola Bunny's redesign, and to them I would just like to say that it's a cartoon rabbit who's good at basketball. That's all. Anyways, I hope you liked this post and I hope you all have a good week! I'll talk to you again next Friday!