Space Jam, which brought together Bugs Bunny and company and professional basketball, with NBA star Michael Jordan leading the Tune Squad.
Space Jam told a fictionalized version of what happened during Michael Jordan’s initial retirement in 1993 and his return in 1995, during which he helped Bugs Bunny and friends win a basketball game against a team of aliens known as Monstars, who wanted to enslave them. Over two decades later, a proper sequel has arrived, titled Space Jam: A New Legacy, which takes the basic premise of a basketball game between the Looney Tunes and another team, with the Looney Tunes now led by Los Angeles Lakers' LeBron James. Instead of going to space, the story took Bugs, LeBron, and the rest to a digital world, where they crossed paths with a variety of worlds and characters from Warner Bros.’ catalogue.
Space Jam: A New Legacy follows LeBron James who has to rescue his son Dom (Cedric Joe) from the Warner Bros.’ serververse, overseen by an evil A.I. called Scooby-Doo, and even Pennywise and A Clockwork Orange’s gang , which highlights two big problems in the film industry lately: nostalgia and IPs/franchises.
Even though Space Jam 2 is a new story with a new NBA star, it takes the exact same premise as the first one, with writers relying more on nostalgia than the story itself, even playing with Ready Player One movie did, though many felt Space Jam 2 overused those Warner Bros. properties and the movie ended up being the longest Warner and HBO Max commercial ever. While this can be fun for some viewers, as they can try and see how many characters they can spot in the background, it further shows Hollywood’s current dependency on IPs/franchises and its lack of attention to the stories of its new movies, using nostalgia as their bait.
As a result, Space Jam: A New Legacy hasn’t been a favorite of critics but it has been mostly well-received by the audience, which could be further proof of how these Hollywood problems do no good to the industry yet continue to be welcomed by the audience, though that might change in the coming years if studios continue to rely on nostalgia and franchises to bring “new” content.
