There's a great tradition of Warner Bros making awful crossovers: Daffy Duck and Porky Pig meet the Groovie Goolies, Justice League 2017 and Tom & Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory immediately come to mind. Now a new addition has arrived. One which makes Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain feel like Citizen Kane by comparison.
As I sat through this movie, I could actually imagine the meetings made at Warner Bros Studios which spawned its creation. They paid close attention to how Disney raked in the cash with Ralph Breaks the Internet and how the Avengers movies make millions just by existing. If Disney could do it, so could they.
Unfortunately, while Disney is shallow, greedy and insincere, Warner Bros is lazy and half baked. And no other product displays this fact like Space Jam: A New Legacy. The sequel to the atrocious advertisement from 1996 isn’t a movie. It’s haphazard, frenzied, unfunny and, at the end of the day, filling a corporate quota.
Bright colours and glitzy fanservice have been engineered specifically to pander to nostalgia and burn a hole in people’s wallets. LeBron and the Looney Tunes fart around in various Warner Bros franchises so that YouTube nerds can upload their “Spot the Character” videos. It’s a shamelessly cold and calculating project almost reminiscent of parents who spoil their children and mistake it for love.
Space Jam: A New Legacy wants to copy the success of all the big crossover ensemble movies while cutting corners. Who needs a story and an honest effort when you can create the illusion of a bigger world by name dropping and shoehorning characters from your library? How about having your characters rapping, mentioning social media and internet memes?
At the end of the day, once you look past the world building and scenes of Clark Kent watching a runaway train or King Kong fistbumping the Iron Giant, it’s heartbreaking.
It’s evident that Warner Bros has little to no confidence in Looney Tunes ever since Back in Action failed to make money. This movie stems from the belief that a Looney Tunes movie, that doesn’t shoehorn celebrities and characters from other properties, will be automatically terrible.
In time, Warner Bros will rename it “The HBO Max Movie”. Or perhaps even “The Movie That Reminds You of More Superior Movies”. Because that’s what it is.
Commercial Schizophrenia
There's a great tradition of Warner Bros making awful crossovers: Daffy Duck and Porky Pig meet the Groovie Goolies, Justice League 2017 and Tom & Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory immediately come to mind. Now a new addition has arrived. One which makes Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain feel like Citizen Kane by comparison.
As I sat through this movie, I could actually imagine the meetings made at Warner Bros Studios which spawned its creation. They paid close attention to how Disney raked in the cash with Ralph Breaks the Internet and how the Avengers movies make millions just by existing. If Disney could do it, so could they.
Unfortunately, while Disney is shallow, greedy and insincere, Warner Bros is lazy and half baked. And no other product displays this fact like Space Jam: A New Legacy. The sequel to the atrocious advertisement from 1996 isn’t a movie. It’s haphazard, frenzied, unfunny and, at the end of the day, filling a corporate quota.
Bright colours and glitzy fanservice have been engineered specifically to pander to nostalgia and burn a hole in people’s wallets. LeBron and the Looney Tunes fart around in various Warner Bros franchises so that YouTube nerds can upload their “Spot the Character” videos. It’s a shamelessly cold and calculating project almost reminiscent of parents who spoil their children and mistake it for love.
Space Jam: A New Legacy wants to copy the success of all the big crossover ensemble movies while cutting corners. Who needs a story and an honest effort when you can create the illusion of a bigger world by name dropping and shoehorning characters from your library? How about having your characters rapping, mentioning social media and internet memes?
At the end of the day, once you look past the world building and scenes of Clark Kent watching a runaway train or King Kong fistbumping the Iron Giant, it’s heartbreaking.
It’s evident that Warner Bros has little to no confidence in Looney Tunes ever since Back in Action failed to make money. This movie stems from the belief that a Looney Tunes movie, that doesn’t shoehorn celebrities and characters from other properties, will be automatically terrible.
In time, Warner Bros will rename it “The HBO Max Movie”. Or perhaps even “The Movie That Reminds You of More Superior Movies”. Because that’s what it is.
This movie is despicable.