Why Space Jam 2 Includes So Many Warner Bros Franchises
Space Jam: A New Legacy won’t just feature the Looney Tunes, as many characters from other Warner Bros. franchises will also appear. Here’s why.
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The first Space Jam: A New Legacy trailer showed the return of the Looney Tunes to the world of basketball, but it also gave the audience a glimpse at the appearance of characters from other Warner Bros. franchises – here’s why. The Looney Tunes have been involved in a variety of adventures for decades, but none can compare to what they went through in 1996 in the live-action/animated sports comedy Space Jam, directed by Joe Pytka. Space Jam brought together two very different worlds unlikely to cross paths in the real world: the Looney Tunes and professional basketball, and while critics weren’t enthusiastic about it, viewers loved this peculiar mix, and Space Jam amassed a cult following through the years.
Space Jam told a fictionalized account of what happened between Michael Jordan’s initial retirement from the NBA in 1993 and his return in 1995, in which he was enlisted by the Looney Tunes to help them win a basketball game against a group of aliens called Monstars, who wanted to enslave them and use them as attractions for their theme park. A bit over two decades later, Space Jam is getting a sequel titled Space Jam: A New Legacy, now with Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James leading the Toon Squad along with other characters from different Warner Bros. franchises, which is something the first movie didn’t have at all.
In the first trailer for Space Jam 2, viewers got a taste of where the story will take them and how LeBron will get involved in a basketball game alongside Bugs Bunny and company, but the biggest surprise was the (quick) appearances of many, many characters from other Warner Bros. franchises, and not all of them are exactly family-friendly. Some of these characters are the Iron Giant, the Scooby-Doo gang, the Flintstones, Yogi Bear, and other well-known faces from Hanna-Barbera, but also more mature characters like IT’s Pennywise, the Night King from Game of Thrones, and Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange, all of which raised a lot of questions about why they were included in Space Jam 2.
While a proper in-universe reason for it will surely be explained once Space Jam 2 comes out, the inclusion of all these characters is most likely due to modern multiverse fascination, famously seen in connected universes like those of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe. Warner Bros. has already explored this option in movies like Ready Player One and both The LEGO Movie entries, which proved to be interesting and fun as viewers are entertained by the appearances of a variety of characters unrelated to the main ones and can look for a lot of Easter eggs and references. Warner Bros. also owns a lot of popular titles, as are Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and DC Comics heroes, which can draw a lot more attention to Space Jam 2 as their characters and settings can be included somehow, even if just briefly, as seen in the trailer when LeBron falls into the virtual space, where worlds like Westeros can be spotted.
Of course, the appearances of all those characters and more doesn’t mean that they will have a proper role in the story, as this is, after all, a Looney Tunes movie with LeBron James, so they will surely just be part of the massive audience present at the basketball game – just like all those Looney Tunes characters were in the first movie. Space Jam: A New Legacy has the essence of the original movie but it’s also very different in many ways, and while some of these might seem weird, hopefully it will all make sense once the movie is released.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/space-jam-2-warner-bros-franchises-multiverse/