COME ON AND SLAM, AND WELCOME TO THE JAM

[Daikun]

Space Jam reboot with LeBron James finally confirmed.

[Daikun]

Trailer

[Dr. Insomniac]

"The White Walkers and Alex DeLarge! My 8-year-old son's favorite characters!"

[Avaitor]

Is that Drake next to the Monty Python knights?

[Daikun]

The Teen Titans are going MST3K-style on the movie.

[Avaitor]

This'll probably be better than A New Legacy. Definitely better than the original, at least.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I want to see Shaq do an MST on Space Jam.

[Daikun]

Just watched it on HBO Max. I like it more than the first movie. It's over-the-top stupid and I had a fun time with it.

[Commode]

oh hey

here to lazily copy and paste my initial thoughts from a post elsewhere don't mind me


fucking warner bros man

so from a pure looney tunes fan perspective, completely ignoring lebron vs jordan and all that other bullshit, I think this movie is marginally better than the first one. I think it's more fun, uses the characters more and better(with one major exception I'll get into that later), more imaginative, over all more of a showcase of the variety of characters than the first one. the 2d isn't bad but you can tell the movie rushes through it quick fast and in a hurry to get to the meat of the movie where they are in 3D. It's just so manically fast paced, something that shit like Lego Movie had issues with too.

I mostly don't have a problem with the having the characters be in different WB franchises thing, beyond the whole premise being a shallow reason to pimp out WB properties and sell HBO Max subs. Daffy and Porky in DC land is good, Wile and Roadrunner in Mad Max land is good, hell even Speedy doing a tired old joke with the bullet dodging from The Matrix is good. Didn't care for Granny in Matrix though, such a weird mix of characters her and Speedy, and Yosemite Sam being in Casablanca world makes zero sense, surely there's a famous WB western he could have been in. Elmer and Sylvester in Austin Powers world I'm not sure how I feel about that, aside from the horrible voice acting for Elmer, yeesh.

The 3D models are fairly good but still I think it's unnecessary. Most of the gags during the game were tolerable to good. Biggest issue with the game part of the movie is how freaking cheap WB was with the effects, the background characters from all the rest of their garbage franchises are insanely distracting on how they are present but no actual effort is put into making them be there and look good. So many of models for like the Hanna Barbera characters are butt ugly, many characters are deliberately not in focus(I wonder why...) and most the the up close characters are on ~10 second loops. Can't tell you how annoying it is to watch one of the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz just be on a loop of movement like a .gif, whose actions have zero correspondence with what's happening in the game. The whole movie just does not have the feel of a theatrically released major film, feels like something made specifically for streaming.

I... really do not like Bugs in this movie. For what ever reason Bugs has been one tough cookie for modern WB to nail his character, but here may be their worst attempt yet. Never known Bugs to be insecure and whiny and not cool and calm and collected in the face of adversity, not even in the first movie. He's over here talking about family like he's fucking Dom Toretto, being depressed and getting shitfaced like he's in Carrotblanca. This isn't the Bugs Bunny from the 40s and 50s shorts. Barely even has any of his smartass qualities he had in the first one.

and for the bit in the game where Foghorn gets ejected they should have had the Barnyard Dawg show up to sneer at him, like come on that joke was right in front of you writers. Really a shocking lack of secondary/minor LT characters in the movie, there's a quick shot of a few of them getting on the rocket ship during Bugs story, and Nasty Canasta inexplicably shows up in the Mad Max scene(though I guess he's not family enough for Bugs to recruit him?). Corny-gie Hall from A Corny Concerto showing up was kind of cute, and you can tell Pepe was supposed to be in the movie before being cut, as the Eiffel Tower is notably seen in various scenes, Lebron even stands right under it.

oh it's pretty funny that the "stakes" for the Looney Tunes characters if they lose the game is they'll be deleted permanently, yet Bugs stresses several times that toons can't die. He even gets deleted from the glitch or whatever and comes back, to which he points out I told you dipshit I can't die. so no real stakes for the rest of the Looney Tunes then huh. Poor writing.

[Dr. Insomniac]

At least LeBron tries to act in this compared to Jordan. He's not good by any means, but at least he's willing to play ball with the LT characters in a way Jordan refused to do in the first film. And unlike Jordan, he's got a little bit of a character arc, and his family reacts to his disappearance unlike Jordan's. Those are all baby steps though, LeBron never gets his own Newman to banter with.

Don't know what Don Cheadle was doing in this film. He gave the best and worst performances here. Not sure what his deal is either. Why does he even agree to LeBron's terms instead of keeping him locked in a cell or torturing him until he agrees to give all his clout to the WB algorithm? Movie needs a basketball plot I guess, but you could've gone a better path than "Evil AI kidnaps LeBron and challenges him to a basketball game in exchange for his followers."

But once I really lowered my expectations, I had fun by the time the game started. None of the cameos made any sense. Why the fuck are Rick and Morty cameoing in this children's film? Why delete Pepe but show the same shot of the White Walkers, one of the nuns from The Devils, and the Clockwork Orange Droogs hollering at the crowd? Why are there two Catwomen with Batman? What kind of kid is meant to see all these references to movies they're not old enough to watch and beg their parents to sign up for HBO Max? That confusion only added to the ironic enjoyment, actually. But yeah, Bugs was awful in this. When he's not redoing his old bits, he's just a manic sadsack. They should've let Daffy be LeBron's co-star.

[Commode]

I don't feel like Pepe Le Pew is essential to the movie and his presence or lack thereof is not exactly missed(he barely did anything in the first movie), but yeah the reason he is not in this is so flimsy it's insane.  Should've kept that rumored scene of him in Casablanca intact, and had Sam be in some old Western, considering minutes before Bugs and Lebron are expositioning in Sam's supposed Saloon.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I don't really give a shit about Pepe in particular. Just the weirdness of taking him out but advertising all these movies and shows that no parent would let their kids watch. Like what the fuck was the deal with putting Foghorn in Game of Thrones? Who's the intended audience for that? Meanwhile, they should've put Yosemite Sam in something like The Searchers. Or Westworld if they needed another HBO show to market.

[Daikun]

There were seven alternate ideas for a Space Jam sequel that were all scrapped.

Let's see all of them.

[Commode]

going to have to watch this movie a few more times the LT portions specifically to be sure but I really think this is gonna be extremely close to a wash as far as being better or worse as the first.  Both movies suck, but for the problems the first movie has at least it features extremely minor characters like Punkinhead Martin and whatever his brothers name is(it's escaping me at the moment) during the meeting scene or minor characters like the Irishman from My Bunny Lies Over the Sea and Egghead Jr from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons or the wolf from Three Little Bops in the crowd, and notably features Toro the bull from Bully for Bugs in a pivotal gag scene.  It used even minor characters better by sheerly actually including them.

But as far as the main cast of LT characters I still think the second movie does a better job.  Doesn't even do as good of a job as Back in Action does in using them and their characterizations but it does do a better job than Space Jam 1.  Even when it's not using their classic characterizations, Porky Pig rapping in an extremely dated manner is better than Porky Pig making a joke about pissing himself.

but apparently this movie is a success beating Black Widow this weekend despite being in a free tier on an at home streaming service and reviewing way worse, has tons of toys and crap at Walmart and Target that is apparently selling in respectable numbers, and even McDonald's Happy Meal toys that anecdotally are pretty popular collectors items.  This movie may be a soulless use of what are my favorite fictional characters that aren't yellow(Simpsons), but if it helps them regain foothold in the public zeitgeist going in to the 2020s decade and beyond I guess I will take it.  Have not failed to notice that several long forgotten shorts from the 30s and 40s have been restored(no matter the actual quality of the final product) only to be shown on a free to air TV station have been shown on MeTV nationwide since January.  In that sense I welcome this film succeeding, it being garbage be damned.

[Dr. Insomniac]

But I'm curious if the movie's doing well because of the Looney Tunes, or is it because of LeBron James hanging out with the Looney Tunes? Similar to how Space Jam's  box office success compared to Back in Action's failure implied Michael Jordan was mostly why audiences went to the former. I'll wait and see, but WB has a bunch of LT projects lined up for production, so they've got a healthy future nonetheless.

As for the LT characters, I think what helped was the change in dynamic. In the first film, they're so fucking helpless against the Monstars they need to beg Michael Jordan for help. But here, it's the other way around and LeBron needs them.